The beach towels are put away in the back corner of our closet. Fall seems to have come a bit early this year, or right on time depending on how you look at things. While normally we might have a few more days of swimming–one summer we went all the way to October 9th–it’s been cooler here for the past several weeks. I often take pictures at the beach, but rarely share them here. Something about our beach days feels sacred to me, the way we’ve learned to mark the time, the way I remember year after year, September by every passing September, that summer is leaving and won’t be back until May at the earliest.

The boys have been asking when Columbus Day is. Every once in a while I have to sit them down and ask them–You’re not miserable, right? There’s a big difference to me between, “I really hate this, please don’t make me” and “This isn’t my favorite, but it’ll be fine”. One is traumatic. The other is growth. So far it seems to be more the later, not even for all of them, and not even every day. We still pray everyday for their mornings, and for the prayer requests ranging from having the day go by fast to could there not be too much homework after school. I add my own along with theirs. While it makes me happy that they do miss home, I want them also to like these days too.

Whenever a season passes I always wish that I’d shared more, whether in thoughts, or pictures, or details of our days. With all that can be said and overheard on social media, I was scarred for a while by the fear of oversharing, even more so by the fear of losing, that I did the thing people do and swung the other way. I used to think I was writing these blogs for my kids, for them to have a sort of record to read and look back on. It didn’t seem right to think that I was writing them solely for myself. I had to have some kind of nobler reason, I still do. I do hope in some way they benefit from me writing here, this pausing to know more of what is true in my life, this wondering if I could’ve shared and brought someone else joy.