Perseverance

Welp, that’s a wrap on summer. The kids officially started school this past week and this weekend marks the unofficial end of summer for most everything else. Pools close, no more wearing white, and football returns. I’m pretty sure your social feeds have been full of PSLs for a couple weeks now too, but I cannot confirm. As of writing this, we Tiger fans are especially excited for the football part. There will be one group of Tiger fans still excited after Saturday night…hope it’s the ones that wear purple. Nope, that won’t work. Hope it’s the ones that play in Death Valley. Nope, that either. Okay, enough beating around the bush - the ones who know how to spell GO!

Summer may be over, but Jennings’s streak is still alive. Another month, zero cancer-related medical appointments. It’s amazing to me how far removed he is from it in his own mind. That helps hammer home the truth of just how far we all are removed from it. He was telling us about one of his new friends from school this year.

“Dad, you know James (not his real name)? We bonded.”

“You bonded? How?”

“When he was little, he had diabetes and had to go to the hospital. I told him when I was little, I went to the hospital for blood cancer.”

He then inquisitively asked us when it was that he was healed, declared cancer-free. We answered him and simultaneously realized just how far away that seems for him. When he relapsed, due to both his age and the length of time in between, he had no recollection of treatment or even having had cancer before. It wouldn’t be far from that now - he knows his story, but I don’t think there are a ton of concrete memories in there…especially of the hard stuff, which is a blessing.

Here is everyone on the first day of school…mommy still going strong with the signs! So fun to look back at these every year.

August was a mix of summer, finishing our transition to the rental house, and a few other unique events like welcoming my brother and his family back to the States. Here’s a few from the past month 👇

Left to right, top to bottom: That’s us at PNC for the kids’ first concert and mommy & daddy’s first time there in years. It was Thomas Rhett, so it was generally fine and PG, but we were probably a little aggressive with how far up we were on the lawn. Lauren was in full mama bear mode making sure the college kids didn’t completely trample her cubs. Next, cousins and brothers united! They’ve been in Germany for the past 6ish years and have moved back stateside for good…such a blessing to be in the same time zone. That’s Jennings on the waterslide at Camp Care. He and Caroline went again this year and had a blast. The camp had to improvise this year as the lake is not usable yet after Helene, so they built the waterslide. It was such a hit that I think it will be a permanent fixture. That camp is Jennings’s happy place. If you ask him before summer what he’s most excited for and after summer what his favorite part was, you’ll get the same answer: Camp Care. Bottom left is L & I at the annual Claire’s Army gala. Another fun night with people we love raising money for a great organization, and one that supported us so well. Lauren with the big smile at Camp Care drop-off. This was right after the move week, so there were no tears shed this year…except maybe the kind that come out of the smiley face emojis. We all needed a little break. 😂 Lastly, we have a dumpster. No permit until this week and no other work has started, but a dumpster counts as progress in my book!

We are almost a month exactly from the last post, which is a little disconcerting in some respects since we haven’t actually started our project. But, looking at it from other angles, we have used most of that month to continue to move things out and haven’t had a lot of pressure on us to get that done. And that’s been nice. In the grand scheme of things, we finally got through the permitting process as of this week and our contractor should be starting next week as well. So, all in all, we are ok with where we are….BUT very excited to get construction started.

We had another big milestone to celebrate this month:

On Sunday, August 24th Caroline was baptized, and I got to do it! She placed her faith in Jesus earlier this year and through her student’s program at New City had become interested in getting baptized to bear witness to her faith. We have seen God’s work in her heart over this past year as well and were so excited to get to watch her take this next step in her walk with Christ.

Getting ready for it had me thinking about my own walk. I find that it can be discouraging at times to reflect on that and realize how far you are from the goal (being like Jesus). Or how, over time, you find yourself needing to repent for the same sins time and time again. I ask myself “Shouldn’t I be farther along?” Sometime, yes, maybe. But I listened to a sermon this past week and a line stuck out to me - the Christian walk is defined by this:

“If you don’t quit, you win.”

I love how simple that is, how true that is, and how encouraging it is. We can’t “arrive” on this side of eternity. The goal is still there, but we work towards it knowing we will never fully get there. We shouldn’t be standing still, but we also don’t need to be beating ourselves up for not attaining perfection. In an earlier sermon by that same pastor, he was explaining the Hebrew word for repentance and how it meant more than just “turn,” as in a singular event. It was an ongoing process - turn, and turn again, and turn again. There are some sins that will plague us for the duration of our time here. That doesn’t mean we give up; we are called to fight, but we need not dwell on our failures. We repent and the very act of turning away and back to God means we haven’t quit. And as long as we don’t quit, we win. How gracious is our God?

“’Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.’ Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love; and he relents over disaster. Joel 2:12-13

#allinforjennings