Summertime

Summertime, and the livin' is easy...

That's pretty much been it...we finished school at the beginning of June, I got deathly ill for 9 days, said goodbye to Chris, took a certification test, and headed south!  I visited my family in Georgia and Florida for about two weeks.  Let me tell you, it gets harder to leave them every time.  Two nieces, 2 and a half and 15 months...next to impossible.

No one tells you what it feels like to have little people as an extension of you...or maybe they try, but it falls on deaf ears until it happens to you.  These little people have my blood flowing through them...we belong to each other.  Miley still looks into my eyes, hasn't seen me in months, and there is this knowing that occurs.  She squints up her eyes and smiles broadly and it's as if she is saying, without words, "I know you.  We belong together."  You may be thinking to yourself, yeah right.  But if you've experienced it, you know it to be true.

So what's the difference when we CHOOSE to belong to  someone?  Is it less powerful?  Is it more powerful?  Sappy-ness is not my goal here...Chris and I choose to belong to each other.  Who he is and what he does matters to me, not because I just need to know everything or whatever, but because he has become a part of me, of my heart, of the person that I am.  And yes, I am me.  If you know me, you know that to be 100% truth.  And Chris is fully himself...and maybe BECAUSE of that, there is depth and power in the fact that we choose to belong to one another.  And through all of this, through our choices to love and to belong, we create family.  We create a sense of belonging for ourselves, for our children, for future generations. 

Church is similar...it's not building, or fellowship times, or a million other little "things" that we do...it is choosing to belong to each other.  Who have you joined up with?  Who have you looked at in the eye and thought, "I know you.  We belong together."  It's a beautiful thing when it happens.  The Spirit of God reaches out and gives us family, invites us to choose each other.