“Of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and growing–as it also does among you, since the day your heard it and understood…”
~Philippians 1:5-6~

I sometimes joke that one of my spiritual gifts is inviting other people over to eat a meal I didn’t cook. At least during camp season, one of the things I like to do is invite people to join us for meals in the dining hall. This week one of the camper moms is coming out daily to give her son an allergy treatment and then staying for a while to monitor the results. Moms have this thing we do sometimes where we don’t want to seem like we’re burdening people or over-mothering.

It’s been wonderful to visit with her this week. Yesterday I also had the chance to visit with a girl I knew from camp. She was a junior counselor in my cabin several times and a regular camper during high school week. We’ve kept in touch off and on through the years, and continue to share in the kindness of mutual respect and affection. Her kids are old enough now to come to camp. After lunch we came back to the house and caught up on life’s doings while her youngest two played.

Four of our five kids are at camp this week, two as workers as two as campers. I was happy to play the laundry-doer, when my working son, in the heat of summer, sweat through most of his clothes in two days. Another had only brought three pairs of socks, and when I looked in his drawer, saw there were none more anywhere to be found. I texted Dad who was out running camp errands, and soon there were enough socks again to deliver to two. I do enjoy the perks of living here.

My daily summer checklist has been holding up well. It’s nothing I obsess over if I don’t get everything done, but it does seem to help me to stay on track and provides the satisfaction of completing a task. I still need to add a box on there for looking at my calendar, as I recently missed a scheduled chiropractor appointment. I would’ve missed an afternoon church meeting, had it not been for a text from one of the attendees saying she’d be a few minutes late.

I’ve written a lot over the past several days, but couldn’t seem to wrap any of it up to a place where I felt okay enough to publish. There’s a line I read last year in Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score that says, “Communicating fully is the opposite of being traumatized.” I’ve found this in so many ways to be true. Thanks be to God the light of the world who comes down, as we continue to practice love’s unsung motion of receiving the moment and passing through it.