and so I write.

I've seen the popular bloggers--the ones with a following of hundreds or even thousands. I know what they write about. I enjoy reading their posts, whether they focus on fashion, design, photography, or regularly pour out their thoughts and feelings. I'm attracted to that. I applaud their creativity, originality, and transparency.

And yet.

With every wonderful post I read, the thought of "Why can't I be more like that?" pops into mind. Uh huh. The question that has plagued human beings--particularly the female side--long before blogging was in existence. I ask it. Often. Maybe it's a matter of pride on my part. I want to be a good writer, a writer whose works touch people or causes them to think. Humorous photo essays may produce a laugh or two, but rarely invite accolades or emails detailing a change in the reader's life.

Time and again, something comical will happen around the house or with my family and I'll think, I need to blog about this. So I do. Because it cements memories in my mind. The little things, the amusing conversations. I don't want to lose them. But after I complete such a post and press the Publish button, I'll walk away, thinking to myself, Next time, next time, I'll post something with more depth or significance. And sometimes I do, but I can't force it. Only very rarely does it come effortlessly. More often, I'll find myself typing away on a humorous piece again, eager to write it down and share.

In so doing, I think I've settled into my niche. It feels comfortable. Right. No matter the amount of comments I receive or the number of hits my blog gets, I'm documenting the life God has blessed me with. Has blessed my family with. A life complete with its ups, downs, dents, nicks, and imperfections, but laced around the edges with the small, funny, and seemingly insignificant moments that we'll remember--one day--as the moments that mattered most. These days won't last forever, I know that.

And so I write.

Endings

Reality? What's that?

Please define.

The past day has been one of endings for our beach vacation this year. The last time I sink my toes in the sand. The last time I feel the power of the breaking waves lifting me up and carrying me on the boogie board to shore. The last time I stand on a sand dune to open my mouth and taste the salty air.

I know we'll be back next year, Lord willing, but still...it's hard to say goodbye to an amazing week.

A week filled with cute little brothers making their own memories.

Celebrating the 4th by dressing in red, white, and blue and heading to the parade and fireworks at the marina.

Collectively oohing and ahhing with the crowd as firework after dazzling firework exploded in the dark sky.

Visiting the shops downtown like all of the other sunburned tourists and loving every minute.

(Do these two look thrilled or what to be wearing their festive hats? Yeah, I think so, too.)

Laughing at the stunts pulled by cousins and siblings.

(Can you hear the ocean, Zander?)

Choot 'im, Elisabeth, choot 'im! ;)

Having a 'twin sister' photo shoot on the sand dunes as another day creeps to a close.

 Elisabeth.

Me.

Elisabeth and me.

Rolling out of bed in the morning and hurrying to slather sunscreen on my shoulders and dash out to the front yard that was the ocean.

Building sandcastles in the grainy white sand. (This one was for you, Bailey, if the name written there isn't enough indication. ;) Thank you so much for the wonderful guest posts, sweet friend!)

Even as I write this post, we're experiencing more 'lasts' in the little beach house on this little Florida island. The last family Wii bowling tournament. The last time we laugh in the living room as we recap events of the day.

It makes me feel melancholy, really. When this post publishes in the morning, I'll have already spent my last night in the cozy room that Elisabeth and I share and will likely be on the road. Home. Which isn't a bad thing, but...well, hold on just a moment while I go hug a sandy beach towel and breathe in the scent of sunscreen.

Just kidding, y'all. Don't worry, I'll be okay. Because even I as feel sad...even as I try to grab and hold on to every fleeting moment...even as my mind subconciously records the 'lasts'...I am already anticipating one thing.

Lord willing, the 'firsts' of next year.

Do you have a favorite place to vacation during the summer?

Summer Tune-Up

7:30 a.m. It's Sunday. I hit the floor groggy in my pink cupcake pajamas and head to the weather-beaten deck. It's warm out, like bread dough rising, warm enough and bright enough to keep my tired eyes squinting. Sunlight is all over green trees. It glints on the leftover morning dew coating the white railing. With a finger in it I write JESUS LIVES IN ME because common sense doesn't kick in until ten o'clock.

Welcome to my morning devotions. (My huge ESV study Bible is lying on the rickety bench behind me, just so you know.)

When I shut the last homeschool textbook, filed away the last science test and checked off the last box on my crammed school schedule, I realized there was something I wanted to do more than anything this summer: I wanted to connect with God.

You'd think a good Christian girl like me would have that all figured out and put in a box -- tied with a pink ribbon, even. I never could. For one thing, I couldn't get myself to sleep at night at a decent hour and so I couldn't get myself up at a decent hour, so the second my mum pulled the shades up with the morning reveille, I was already late for life. I had school to do. I had chores. I had places to go, speeches to make, friends to talk with, favors to fulfill. I didn't have time to pull out my leather Bible and just drink it all in, quietly. Once a week, if I was lucky, I would grit my teeth and get through a few verses and a muttered prayer before plunging back into life's battle.

Thank goodness for summers. Schedules relaxed, mother-issued reveille came a few hours later, and there was time to step into the warm late mornings with Bible in hand and prayer in heart. To me, the second I pack away two semesters of academia, that's my New Year. An icy, dead, sniffle-infested, blanket-requiring New Year doesn't inspire in me any thoughts of action -- plus I'm stuck in limbo between the school year, knocked out by the semester before and stumbling into the new one right out of the holidays. But summer -- summer when the birds sing outside your windows at five in the morning -- summer when the sunlight filters through white curtains -- summer when you can dream barefoot under the green apple trees -- that's when I get excited. That's when I'm free to live and grow.

My summer resolution was to get into the habit of daily devotions -- but seeing those words, "the habit of daily devotions," I realize that's not really what I want to do. I want to create a hunger in me for the Word. I want to carve out a place for starting the day out right, now, when the schedule's still soft. I want to learn how to study my Bible so I don't flip aimlessly through thin sheets of text, wondering how on earth this is spiritual.

More than that, I wanted to meet Him -- to meet the God I'd professed allegiance to, to learn the sound of His voice, the turn of His words, to think His thoughts, to do His doings. The thing was, I had left that desire so long in the dusty garage of "things to do when I have time" that it was completely out of shape when I pulled it out at the beginning of the summer. How did this work again?

A good place to start when you want to know God is to ask Him point blank: Now what do I do? So I asked Him. And this is what I learned.

1. It's about quality, not quantity. I was in the spiritual downy-dumps for the longest time because I'd never read through the entire Bible. I'd made it to Numbers, I think, and then the pattern was read a few verses, fall asleep, wake up bored, give up the Read Your Bible in a Year plans and wander away from Bible reading completely. But it dawned on me: The point of Bible reading wasn't to get a little lapel button that says, "I read the Bible in a year." It wasn't to give me a bragging point when the subject of Bible reading comes up in Sunday school. Reading the Bible isn't the point of reading the Bible.

Think back to your last Bible reading. If you can't even vaguely remember what you read about, you know exactly what my position was: I could read fast and furious, but I wasn't retaining anything. I was focused on quantity, not quality. That's shooting wide off the target.

I switched things to get my arrow in focus again. I would read huge chunks -- whole books, even -- in one sitting, but I would read them daily, over and over again. I would memorize passages that stuck out to me. I would pray them back to God. I would expound them in my mind, I would expound them to God, I would expound them to my best friend. It wasn't just a check on the list or a pat on the back anymore: it was truly meditating and delighting in the Word of God.

2. Memorization is easier than you think. Once I grew out of Awana, my memorization quotient dropped to zip, zilch, zero. I changed that this summer. But instead of forcing myself to memorize random passages as part of a daily routine, I would memorize as a part of my daily Bible reading. I would memorize meaty bites of Scripture that challenged me to rethink what I knew about God and my spiritual walk. And because it was taken straight out of my daily Bible reading, I memorize the full context and meaning of those words -- it wasn't just a verse or two taken out of context and tucked away meaningless in the back of my mind. (Handy Hint: Write down your memorization. Repeat them daily. If you're stuck wide awake at two in the morning, say them over and over until you fall asleep again.)

3. Drop everything to put it first. One of my hugest pet peeves is wearing pajamas all day. That's the worst part of being sick, in my humble opinion. But I've found that on days when I'm tired, busy or spiritually burnt out, even things like running a brush through my hair and going through the agonizing process of picking out an outfit will distract me from kneeling in God's presence first. That's why I was out on the back deck in my pink cupcake pajamas.

4. Prayer is the backbone of Bible-reading. The Word is not a collection of nice sayings to start the day out right. It's not dusty classic that you have to read for life. It's not a do-it-yourself guide when things get choppy. It's the direct link to God's voice, His thoughts, His will. We read it best when we read it in the covering of prayer, when we are actually sitting at Christ's feet and listening, like Mary, when we are worshipping and lifting our hearts to His. Much has been said about how reading the Bible will give you something to pray about -- it's just as true that talking to your Father will give you Someone to read about. I used to strictly draw a line between "Bible reading" and then "prayer" -- now I roll it all together, in a discussion: I listen when I'm reading; if I have a question, I ask, and then I listen; if He says something through His Word that is undeniably a God-thing, I praise Him for it -- aloud.

Connecting, you know. Connecting with Him. That's what I'm doing this summer. Join me, friends.

Bailey loves the Word...and words in general.  Big words like pulchritudinous. Fun words like word-hoard. Made-up words like argufying. (Reading the dictionary is a first-rate hobby for her.) Her passion is to catch words of grace and truth, like fireflies in summer, and send them lighting up a dark world. Find her word crafting in her big house in the little woods.

a taste for blackberries.

There is something about blackberries that is so completely all-American.

 You have the red and ripening blackberries which have yet to turn colors.

You have the mature blackberries which, in all honesty, are more of a bluish purple.

And finally, you have the white highlights added to the berries by the sunlight.

Red, white, and blue.

 It's fun to watch children bending over blackberry bushes, picking the ripe berries, the juice staining their hands a purplish hue. There's a great chance of being snagged by thorns, but those scratches on their little arms merely adds to the feeling of victory as they plop a few in their pails and more in their mouths.

When I see blackberries, I think of America. And it's difficult to think of America without remembering those that gave their all so that we might be free. 

I know that yesterday was Memorial Day and I love celebrating it as much as anyone. But we should also remember those that have made the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom every day of the year. Those that made it possible for children to pick as many handfuls of blackberries as they want without fear or worry.

So the next time you see or eat a blackberry...

Remember.

{Between You and Me}

There are certain little jumbled thoughts o' mine, certain admissions, if you will, that just can't find their way into an entire post by themselves and so will nestle here for you to read.

Take a second glance at the title, though.

This is just between you and me. I don't expect these admissions to find their way to the World Wide Web, got it? ;)

~I should not...

...Begin a suspenseful mystery late at night. Really, I shouldn't. Particularly one that involves trading markets and international problems. Whoosh! <--Oh, that sound was just all of that flying straight over my head. Cramming my mind with such information leaves me awake half the night, my little brain trying to puzzle it all out.

~My siblings have an interesting effect on my thought life

 It's true. I was watching a little boy the other day. He had brown hair and was wearing a green striped shirt. I was thinking to myself, "Wow, he looks just like someone I know...only a younger version." It finally occurred to me that he resembled Steve from the old Blue's Clues. Oh, for the love of little siblings.

To be perfectly honest, he did look just like a li'l Steve. Someone give me a pawprint here. I deserve it.

~I take a tremendous guilt trip every time-

-I accidentally hit a butterfly. You know you've seen such horror happen before, too. You're driving along without a care in the world when, in feature length movie slow motion, a butterfly flutters in your path. Perhaps you've cried out, "Nooo!" and it echoed off the walls of your vehicle. But there's nothing you can do.

And just like that, in that fatal moment, its little life is snuffed out. For what was the hard work and time that it took to make it from the egg to caterpillar to cocoon to the moment when it lifted those beautiful wings and could finally fly?

I've got to stop right there. This is hurting my butterfly lovin' heart.

~Take me out to the ball game!

I have always wanted to photograph...a baseball. Not a brand new one fresh from the store, but an old, used baseball that had seen its share of being coated in rosin. It might sound odd, but believe me, this dream of photographing a baseball is right up there with my addiction to photographing newsboy caps if you can believe that's possible.

You didn't know I had an addiction to photographing newsboy caps? I do.

 Enter problem: we have one baseball in our home. One. And every time I decided to give it a free photo session, it disappeared, perhaps due to shyness, perhaps due to little brothers who play with it. However, yesterday was a red letter day. Yesterday was the day I found it just lying on my bedroom floor.

Maybe it had finally overcome its fear of the camera. Whatever the reason, I scooped it up along with a baseball glove and took about 36 photos of this sole baseball. 36. Possibly too many photos of a baseball? Right. As if.

In any case, I fulfilled a lifelong dream and might do it again soon. Providing my subject doesn't chicken out again.

Maybe I should just marry a baseball player. At least there would be plenty of baseballs to go around, right?

Totally kidding.

~I am quite averse to change. Example?

Clear granola bar wrappers. I can't stand them. What happened to the solid wrappers and whose crummy idea was it to change? I DON'T care that granola bars in the new wrapper are generally moister than they were when in the old. It doesn't matter.

What does matter is the fact that the granola bar industry decided to switch it up on me and make me anxious every time I stick my hand into the box and pull out a clear wrapper. It's disturbing.

Hmmm, this might be more than a mere aversion to change. This could be a phobia to it. Anyone got a name for that?

~I spend inordinate amounts of time photographing the unusual

Isn't this just the coolest thing? It's a cabinet that belongs to my grandmother on Dad's side and it houses a mirror...so it appears as though I'm outside looking in. Neat-o.

I really don't know how long I stood there trying to get these shots. It was awhile.

~Turtles are impossibly impolite

This is Joe. Say hi, Joe. I really don't know much of Joe's character as we only met briefly during a visit to Okefenokee Swamp last year. However, I needed a photo of a turtle to illustrate my point.

Joe is a turtle.

Hence your introduction to Joe.

My decision that most turtles are rude happened about two weeks ago. I was driving along when I suddenly stopped in the middle of the road to pick up and help a turtle that was slowly trudging across. I was striding with purpose and the feeling that I was doing a wonderful thing when it took one look at my face and shot off like a bottle-rocket. But not before giving me a turtle-y version of the stink eye.

Maybe he was having a bad day.
Maybe he was an old geezer who didn't welcome help from anyone.
Maybe my approach gave him that extra-incentive to fulfill his lifelong dream of pulling a Ninja Turtle stunt.
Maybe he just didn't want the chore of having to pull out the ole' Shell Sanitizer had my human hands touched him.

However, I was personally affronted and have since changed my belief that turtles are cute li'l misunderstood creatures.

My apologies, Joe.

And for the record, my hands were clean.

Memory Lane

 This post is for those of you who ever experienced a certain, wonderful little thing called childhood.

This is for those who didn't know what 'innocent' meant. You just were.

This is for those who ever dressed themselves in a mismatched assortment of clothing (aka Froggy Facts t-shirt, green swim trunks, and rubber cowboy boots) and believed it to be a job well done.

This is for those who smiled unabashedly for the camera without asking to see the photo afterwards and perhaps moan about some flaw in their features. You simply didn't worry or care about such things.

This is for those who ever wore their nicest polka dot flip flops on a walk to the pond and regretted it for the dirt.

Whoops. How did that get in there?

This is for those whose biggest worry in life was something as small as outrunning Brother in a race down rows of corn.

This is for those whose imaginative spark transported them to another place altogether. When something as simple as an irrigation gun became an Army tank in a foreign battlefield defending the United States.

This is for those who could suddenly drive, fly, shoot guns, or have insanely amazing super powers...perhaps all in the same twenty minutes.

"Raise the guns..."

"TIGHTEN THE...uh, whatever it is that you...tighten...on a tank."

"Look up, men!"

This is for those who became so swept up in their game that everyday happenings (such as a jet flying past) only added to the excitement.

"Fire!"

"Did we get 'im?"

 

This is for those who stood a foot taller during these sessions of pretend, because in those moments, you weren't playing Superman or a war hero. You became them.

(This shot reminds me of the soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima for some reason).

This is for those who could pause the game and make silly faces for the camera, not caring who was watching.

This is for those who completed a game of pretend with a heady sense of accomplishment at a job well done.

This is for those who ever wonder why they were in such a hurry to grow up and leave all of that behind. And this is for those who sometimes--just sometimes--wish they could go back for a brief while and relive every wonderful, magical, imaginative second.

This is for you.