Respite

It's kind of funny in a way that I am from the South, and live in the South, and dislike hot weather as much as I do. Summer is NOT my season. So I was delighted this morning when the air was cool and the mountain I can see from my breakfast room was the deep, dusky blue we usually don't see until October. UP went the windows, and ON went the whole-house fan, pulling that delicious (not to mention free) cool air through our rooms.

With that cool breeze I am starting to feel a creative itch, to pick up the camera and climb the fence to shoot the sunflower that just started blooming, to dig into my papers and inks and goodies to record some of the memories we've been making in the months since I last scrapbooked, to start an embroidered present for a beloved sister in law.

I know the heat and humidity will return, and the sting of mosquito bites, and water beading on cold glasses of lemonade, the dance of fireflies and the audacious flowering of zinnias. I am hoping too that this creative impulse will not wilt but blossom still, giving me a full heart and busy hands well into the fall.

I think combating the natural weariness and impatience we can feel with homekeeping, with its repetition and monotony, has two prongs. One is what I often speak of here-- recognizing the sacred nature of the acts we do in being where God has called us to be. When we fully invest ourselves in our tasks, doing them in quiet service to our beloveds and to the glory of God, the tasks are both enriched and lightened.

But the other solace can be found in embracing part of our natures, created as we are in God's image, to become creators ourselves. Whether in writing, photography, sewing, painting, sketching, weaving, knitting, whatever our hands are drawn to, there can be great joy in creating something. Different than a kitchen floor, which will dirty no matter how beautifully and prayerfully it has been washed, a piece of art both gives us a sense of completion and takes on a life of its own. And in the creative process, we nearly always cross a line from the art being something we are caring for to something we are participating in.

This is why creative arts can often provide true "re-creation" to us, though it can seem absurd to want to "do something else" at the end of a busy and tiring day. And sometimes we need to do, simply, nothing, surely. But on other days, perhaps when we seem to have done the same things, many times over, the answer may be to make something. Not because we have to, not because a tummy will go empty or a little body unclothed, certainly not because we are paid or graded, but because He made us like Him, because He makes our fingers to make, and then to stand with Him, and see, and say, "It is good."