Summer Rules #1: Seek the Water

Well, once again, here's my annual end-of-summer "Gosh I didn't post much" and "I hope I remember my log in" blog post. (See here, here, and here). And it really does feel like the end of summer, though there are still eight days of August left, and ten days until Labor Day. Ten days--that's plenty of time to soak up a bit more summer goodness before turning our hearts towards all the glories of fall. So here's the deal. There are some principles we followed this summer that made our travels and adventures particularly good, and I'm hoping to keep those principles alive even while settling into normal routines here at home. I'll post them sporadically over the next few days, hopefully finishing before Labor Day. Deal? Deal.

Summer Rules #1--Seek the Water.
Water--in any and all forms possible: watering pitchers, hoses, sprinklers, swimming pools, and lakes. Our close-to-home, affectionately-named Mud Lake, the pounding and cold Lake Erie, the even more pounding and cold Lake Superior, the quiet, suburban Prior Lake and back-roads-Wisconsin Lake Prinel. In a summer where much of the country experienced drought, we felt lucky to have so much water in our lives, and lucky that our kids love it so much. It was wonderful to watch a non-swimmer become comfortable going under, jumping in, diving down, gliding and almost--almost!--floating. And it was scary to watch a much younger non-swimmer attempt to do everything her brother did, notwithstanding the size differences between them!
Water-life--such a natural part of summer--and as such, a daily reminder of our calling to live "wet": to live as one who is baptized, one who has been "plunged into the entire Biblical story" of God's gracious love and redemption (Daniel Erlander, Let the Children Come). Let us seek the water.