Abundance

We’ve only been out of school for about two weeks, but it feels longer. All the summer things are happening here. Warm days and cool nights, day trips to the beach, strawberry everything. We’re soaking it all in.

When our busy school schedules slowed and I let my mind rest, something else happened, too. I got overwhelmed. Four days into summer break, I was a bit of a mess. There were a lot of events at home and in the world I had been too busy to fully process—the war in Ukraine, school shootings, Christians behaving badly in the public arena, parenting frustrations and failures, rising Covid cases, ruined plans. “I can’t hold even one more thing,” I confessed to Mark. He understood and was feeling much the same himself.

On the sixth day of our summer break, we took a day trip to a seaside town. We wandered Main Street, ate ice cream for lunch, and played on the beach. Nowhere do I feel more at peace than at the ocean. The colors, the sounds, the space—muted pastels and sharply outlined coasts, powerful waves and gentle sand, methodical tides and varied landscapes, hot sun and cooling breezes. The contrasts spun out their magic before us.

That day, the contrasts of the North Atlantic landscape struck me in a different way, too. In order to process what is hard, I need to take it easy. In order to face what is painful, I might need to shut out the never-ending stream of bad news that pours through my phone. In order to do good in this aching world, I look down at exactly the place I’m standing and ask, “What is there for me to do right here, right now?” or “What is there for me to lay down right here, right now?”

In order to expand, I must first contract.

Recently, I read two small pieces by Christian writers about handling trauma, whether it’s our own hardship or hardships happening thousands of miles away. “Are we too busy to grieve?” one writer asked. Another wrote about turning off the news and social media notifications once in a while to allow ourselves to focus on our little corners of the world. “It’s okay to pay attention to your own life,” she wrote.

These might seem like opposing viewpoints. At the surface, one writer suggests that we need to slow down in order to connect with and process the pain and trauma around us. Another suggests it’s healthy to shut it out on occasion.

The directives actually align with the same truth. I am a finite creature with real physical and emotional limitations. I can’t ignore that or wish it away with high productivity goals, long to-do lists, expansive up-to-date knowledge of the world, or even a fun summer bucket list.

When summer started, all I did was jump from one agenda to the next—our calendar didn’t empty once school got out, it just changed. And as fast as it was changing, the kids and I were dreaming ways to fill in our days. I was running from one type of busyness to another, without checking in on how any of us was really doing at the end of the school year. I was forgetting to be still.

I understand, as well, that the invitation to stop and sit with my questions, pain, and even joy is a privilege. Our family’s basic needs for safety, nourishment, and shelter are met. When I am physically safe, when my body has what it needs, there is time and space to rest. Our day off at the beach was a privilege. Watching our children lope across the sand as the sun set behind us was a privilege.

Then, just as June rounded the corner to July, we found ourselves facing new trials. Last weekend we came home from a mini vacation to a contaminated water system. All the good vacation vibes and rest slipped away. The expensive repairs, time-consuming treatments, and lack of clean drinking water at our house is challenging enough. Then Tuesday K experienced a freak accident. In an instant, the day darkened. I found myself rushing him to the ER, his pinky finger crushed past full repair. There will be many more appointments. Surgery may be in his future.

We are fragile. So much is beyond our control. And so. There is a point at which we can only surrender the weight of things to something stronger than ourselves. We lean on God. On each other. We remember we are dust.

In order to expand, I must first contract.

Writer Wendell Berry has written extensively about living intentionally in the finite, physical spaces we inhabit. He writes, “No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it.” To live given lives, we tend the soil of our one small life. That our lives are small, local, particular is nothing to regret or overcome. The essential problem of first world living might be this: we’re so full, so busy getting fuller, we forget that need is a natural condition of being human; we can’t outrun it. When we devote all our energy to trying, we fail to see how we starve our souls.

Today, I am utterly spent and still grateful. I am eager to live days that felt like the summer we imagined in May. But I am well aware those days may elude us. At least for right now.

The truth is, I can’t process any burden until I lay it down and step away for a bit. There has to be space for feelings. Not just figurative space. Real space. Real time. Summer started and all I wanted was to fill it with fun and to check neglected tasks off my to-do list. I’d forgotten the necessity of being present not just to the to-do list, but to my soul-list as well.

What do you need most in this season of summer abundance? What’s on your soul list? Perhaps the place to start is to ask yourself what you need less of.