August: The Holiest Ground

For most of my life, I have had a love/hate relationship with the fall season. I love the colors, the decor, the clothes, the growing crispness in the air. It is a beautiful time. Yet it is a time of beginnings for those whose lives revolve around the school calendar, and I hate beginnings. Isn't that odd? Most people speak of new beginnings with anticipation and positivity and hope. But I like endings. I like when things are complete and accomplished. It has taken me a long time to recognize this, and an even longer time to admit it. Endings are my favorite. And August is full of beginnings.

August means back to work for me. A job I enjoy, a job I feel is a gift to me, a job that allows me to be someone that doesn't exist anywhere else. I am so grateful for that. Yet the change of going back to it after a summer of not--it's hard.

August means back to school for Lauren. A new classroom, a new teacher, a new adjustment. Increasing independence from mom and home. Increasing responsibilities, increasing fear, increasing needs.

August means a new school for Jonathan. Yet another change for a boy who does so well with sameness. A new routine that he may not adjust well to. A new opportunity to fail.

So much beginning, so much new, so much change. The past few years it has been enough to make me dread August, to approach with fear and clenched fists. To live in survival mode, praying for it to pass quickly.

And yet...

This weekend, Gary took both kids up to Grandma and Grandpa's house in Roseville. It's the first time I have been in my home for 48 hours without anyone else in 4 years. It is bizarrely quiet. It is deliciously quiet. It is refreshingly quiet.

Many people don't like silence. I have lots of friends who always need to fill the silence--with talking, with music, with anything. That is not me. I drink in the silence. I can finally hear in the silence. I need the silence, and it has been the one thing that is hardest for me about becoming a mom. Before I had kids, I would sit in the silence each morning before work. I called it my "quiet time" because I would often read my bible and pray. But it wasn't really about the reading or even the praying. It was about the peace that fills in the silence.

So this weekend, I planned shopping with my mom, I planned projects to complete, I planned sleep and no cleaning and no cooking. All of which have been delightful. But most of all, I planned silence. Both mornings I have sat in my backyard, wrapped up in a blanket, holding my cup of coffee, reading my most favorite book. And God spoke to me in that silence--through the words on the page, through the tweeting of birds, through the comfort of it all.

My most favorite book is "One Thousand Gifts" by Ann Voskamp. I want to tell the whole world to read it, but I don't because I know many won't need it the way I do. It happens to be the exact right words at the exact right moment in my life, and I know that wouldn't be true for many. So I enjoy it to myself. And I drink in the words from the 8th chapter this weekend. The chapter that speaks of "stress"--the socially acceptable way to describe fear. And I think of my "stressful" August and the fears that envelope me. And I read anew about my favorite passage in all the bible, when Moses asks God to show him His glory. And God tells Moses, "When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back" (Exodus 33:22-23). And it dawns on me as I read: It is in the dark that God is passing by. It is in the dark that God is closest. Dark is the holiest ground.

My perspective on the ominous August is changed. It is the holiest ground. It is where God's will is done, because I am too weak to control it all. It is where God is closest because I need Him most. It is the reason I can thank God for August and mean it. It does not make new and change and beginnings easier or better. But it makes them different. It makes them holy.