For young families, this is the month that most rivals, possibly surpasses, December in busyness. I confess that at the peak of my parenting years, I even dreaded it, the bursting of spring into full and luxuriant bloom was lost to sight when faced with the daunting number of commitments on the calendar.
The season for reveling in the out of doors was more often marked with running in and out of doors than with planting and cultivating – all that beauty seemingly wasted as our van sped obliviously past it from one ball practice to the next track meet, one recital to the next rehearsal, one banquet to the next school assembly. Rather than savoring the soft breezes and warm sunshine, we were squeezing in shopping trips for Mother’s Day and graduation party gifts and would find ourselves breathless and behind by Memorial Day prowling through the picked over plants at the nursery to try to make up for lost time to beautify the yard. In wrapping up the school year and unwrapping summer, May’s glory was lost in a twinkling, or rather, an exhausted haze, or at least that’s how I looked at this season at the time.
I live a sedate life now by comparison, but May still holds more things to do than hours in which to do them. Here are some things I wish I had appreciated more and fretted less about in the past during the overwhelming month of May:
1. Life. It passes swiftly, just like spring. Those demanding days with young children are nearly over as soon as you feel their full weight.
2. Love. It is as all-consuming and abundant as the time involved in celebrating and caring for the people who receive it.
3. Gratitude. The gifts of God are so lavishly poured out we forget they are gifts as we sink under the weight of them, more often battling drowning then drinking them in with humble surrender.
That’s all. Nothing new. No new miraculous plan for survival. Just live, love, and be oh so thankful.
Surely then we will be the merriest merrymakers that our Creator ever created us to be, even as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, rejoicing in the season the Father has given – busy, and beautiful.
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Featured Image by Paul Boekell
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I love the very last sentence. We forget how much JOY there is abounding around us. We have busyness that fills us and not being blind to see the beauty. I do feel like this as everything winds down and summer settles in . Then we go to Emily Dickinson’s ” A something in a summer’s day…”