The Importance of Summer Days

Ah, summer, I just love summer! For me, just the word SUMMER makes me smile. It brings to mind images of sunshine, sundresses, laughter, celebration, swinging on porches while crickets chirp nearby and epic family adventures. How about you?

I suppose if every day were as carefree as a summer day, summer wouldn’t be as special as it is — but every day is not like a carefree summer day — and that is why summer has a special place in my heart.

When I talk about Heaven with my kids, it is the days of summer that most quickly come to mind. When I envision the place that God has prepared before me, the days we spent in little apartments by the sun-drenched blue-green Aegean Sea are all that I can even imagine can begin to touch on the beauty of what that place may be like.

To be fair, we can not ignore the challenges of summer. The sunburns, the bugs, the dangers that hiking through fields and swimming in lakes present — I am not blind to the challenges and dangers of this most favorite time of year. I know them well.

Case in point: last summer, we had to treat a child for Lyme Disease. We discovered a rash that wouldn’t go away and symptoms had set in. It was scary and a bit traumatic, but we think we caught it in time, thanks be to God. No residual problems.

But wouldn’t you know it, this summer, I discovered a damn deer tick on that same child and less than a week later, I had to tweeze another one of his little brother, too. Two different occasions of me staring one of my worst fears in the face: the long-term sickness of a child due to a tiny, itty bitty bug.

It is enough to give up on summer and wish for snow to kill the bugs — or at the very least to have my children stay inside all day and stare at screens rather than face the dangers of the outdoors.

But there is something in me that knows that these little perils are meant to keep us close to God and relying upon Him.

They are meant to remind us that we aren’t in paradise yet — but we have a chance to get there and we OUGHT TO STRIVE FOR HEAVEN ABOVE ALL OTHER THINGS. Heaven will be that joy-filled place where every tear has been wiped away, every sickness of mind and body cured and every sad moment of our lives somehow only adding to the JOY we experience in HEAVEN.

It reminds me of Our Lady of Lourdes when she spoke to Bernadette and said to her, “I don’t promise you happiness in this life, but in the next, yes!”.

We have no guarantees in this life. Sadness may come. Sickness, disease, depression, anxiety, back-breaking work and difficulty are likely going to be a part of this life — but not the next!

It’s why I’ve sent those kids of mine back outdoors to roam fields and swim in lakes and face the dangers of this world — but I haven’t sent them out to face the dangers and the wolves alone. They have family and good friends, and they have their faith.

With God at their side, I know they will be able to face and even overcome those challenges. With God at their side, I know that my children aren’t limited by my strength (or lack thereof!) or my shortcomings. His strength and might are there to get them to the finish line.

Parents, we have the difficult job of raising our kids well, putting their hands in the hands of Jesus and Mary and slowly stepping back to allow them to face the dangers and the joys of this life they have been given. We’ll always be there for them, but some things they will have to do on their own.

No parent wants to see their child suffer — but far worse is to fail to teach our kids to live! REALLY LIVE — to love and to embrace the God who made them very, very good and to TRUST IN HIS ANSWERS.

Not an easy task, but necessary if we are to ever really learn to live and teach our kids to do the same.

So parents of the world (and kids who may be reading) only ONE THING IS NECESSARY. Choose that ONE THING. Choose Christ!

Love Him. Serve Him. Get to know Him and teach your kids to KNOW, LOVE AND SERVE HIM TOO, and one day you will step into that world of everlasting summer days in which every tear will be wiped from your eyes.

The fight will be over. The Victory will be Christ’s (it already is!) and if you stay close to Christ, the JOY of that everlasting victory will be shared by you and your kids and the Saints and all those who love God!

So run that race so as to win! Find those little joys in this life, those joyful moments give to us by God so that we might have the strength to continue this race and win eternal life.

Draw on those “summer days” — those days that remind us that God is so good — and SHARE those days with your family and friends. Those joys are best experienced as a family and as a community, so make time to slow down and enjoy the good things of this world with the people around you.

Not only will those “summer days” keep you going, but they will keep the people around you going too. Those joys are meant to be a source of encouragement so we can continue the sometimes difficult trek before us. You will draw on those moments when dark times come your way. Savor them. Remember them!

Happy Summer days are God’s reminder that THE BEST IS YET TO COME!

“When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”

I Corinthians 15:54-55