When I was a kid, I spent the entire summer—which was actually three full months off of school, rather than the two plus one week-ish they have now—roaming the neighborhood with two of my friends. Summers seemed endless. Now it feels like the summer is almost gone, even though it’s only mid-July. Maybe that’s because for me May and June are over, and I’ll have to think about class planning in a couple of weeks, but I also think it has to do with how busy my kids have been.

Last week both kids went to “camps” at their school. I have no idea why these things came to be called camps, because they have nothing to do with camping—which I love and never get to do because my husband is not a nature guy. My daughter went to Craft & Sports camp in the mornings, and my son, not old enough for that camp, had two play dates with friends from school. In the afternoons, they both went to Creation Science camp. I love that my kids get to learn about the science side of creation, both from school and camps like this—I went to a public school for elementary and learned evolution as “fact,” not the theory that it is, and have always had to try to reconcile creation with science on my own. It’s so much better to learn, as my kids are learning, what other theories there are about the origins of the universe, of animals, of plants, and of people and what the Bible says and the scientific facts that support it.

This week is the last of the camp weeks—my son is at a day camp at our church, put on by the same organization that my daughter went away to camp for earlier in the summer. He sometimes gets nervous with new situations, and was nervous yesterday before I dropped him off. When I picked him up and asked him how it was, he went from “I didn’t really like it and don’t want to come back tomorrow,” to “I liked it, but I didn’t love it,” to “I loved it! I want to go to overnight camp next year!” (he’ll be old enough, but I’m not sure he’ll be ready for that quite yet). He was excited to be dropped off this morning, so we’ll see by the end of the week.

As for me? In some aspects, I seem to have stalled for the summer but I’m refusing to stop plodding along. Last week I posted about the little things that kept happening, and those little things tend to add up and seem big sometimes—things like it taking much longer to get tasks done than it should, which takes away time from things I would much rather be doing—the work I believe God has given me to do (see the three big things here, if you don’t remember or don’t know about those)—like working on my book project. My duties as a mom and wife take away from the other work sometimes, but I need to remember that those duties are also a huge part of the work I’m meant to do, and am just praying (and praying, and praying) that God will help me to recognize and follow his lead when he leads me, and to trust in his timing for the rest. I refuse to give up faith in his plan for me—and I know he has one:

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10, NIV)

To be honest, even writing this blog lately has been a struggle, both time-wise and style-wise. If you’re a regular reader forgive me—I know the format/style these past couple of posts has been different from what you’ve been used to reading. I hope you’ll allow me some freedom in this! But this blog is about writing life, about being transparent when it comes to my life—full of failures, which we don’t normally see in others (especially on social media!)—and my faith, and of God’s amazing grace in dealing with me (us) on a daily basis. So while I often write in a devotional style, this post and the last has been almost pure “life lived.” And maybe, when it comes to me personally, a plea for your prayers: prayers to “continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18, NIV)—and to just continue.

With that, I can’t resist this: To be continued…