Redeem Summer

My sweet hubby is finally back to his usual self, after his crazy allergic reaction two weeks ago. THANK GOODNESS – I don’t think I could take much more of him looking at me with those puffy, red eyes! He looked so uncomfortable, but he was awesome about everything. He would just silently scratch away, suffering quietly. We are so different that way – somehow, when I’m the one who’s sick, I feel the need to provide hourly updates, so he’ll know exactly how I’m doing all day long. Ben would rather keep it a secret when he’s sick. He’s had to be a little more open about it this time, seeing as you can’t really hide fuschia skin…

So he’s good to go, but in the meantime…we’ve kinda missed summer. We had to cancel our vacation plans, and when my mother-in-law asked me the other day if we’ve been using our deck a lot, I looked at her blankly, and thought, “Deck? Have we used our deck? I haven’t been out there in ages!! Why haven’t we used our deck??!”

Then I realized, it’s because we’ve been in survival mode for three weeks, which hasn’t been very conducive to lounging around on the deck, relaxing with a cold drink.

And I felt sad, because fall is pretty much here, and while I’m sure it will be awesome, I’m feeling like we missed out on some really great parts of summer.

I was sharing these thoughts with a friend this week, and she prayed for me – she asked God to “redeem summer”. That stuck with me.

I thought about it as I went home, and all the next day, and then I looked up the definition of redemption.

Some definitions for the word are not helpful, in this situation – “buy back, rescue”. We can’t get a do-over. It’s done, and it is what it is.

But redemption can also mean atonement, which means “to make amends, or compensate for a wrong”.

I would like to make amends with summer!

Because you know what? Even if summer didn’t go the way I hoped it would, and it wasn’t the most fun we’ve ever had, it was good. Really good. There were some hard lessons I needed to learn, some hard work was done, and we made it through some hard experiences.

But it was good.

It reminds me of a quote I shared a few weeks ago:

source

So here’s to making amends with summer, and letting fall be whatever it will be!