I’ll admit it.  In many ways, this has been a great summer in my life.

After years of apartment living, I somehow found myself in a home this summer, with interest rates at an all-time low and with buyers free to pick up bargains.

I’ve been consistent this summer running, keeping up (mostly) with Hal Higdon’s schedule for marathon training.  I’ve wanted to run the Chicago Marathon for a number of years now, as a sort of homecoming shuffle through this city I lived in for a short spell a decade ago, and this city I grew to love.  I think I’ll be ready to tackle the 26.2 miles, and maybe even complete the run near my goal of four hours.  Or four and a half hours.  The goal changes from day-to-day, depending on how my training run felt that morning.

I’ve decided to settle into a new church home after filling a seat in the sanctuary for a number of months.  I felt led to join Sagebrush Church after I heard that one of its worship leaders, Jim Meyer, was going to be taking the pastorate at a new campus site plant which would meet at Highland High School.  The Spirit spoke, and I said “Yes”, and I joined Sagebrush, and then I attended plant group meetings all summer.  That campus had its first test run service last Sunday in the Highland Performing Arts Center, and its first public service is this coming Sunday at 11:15 a.m.  I’ve spent the last few weekends adding my hands and feet to the many other of folks who also decided to come aboard at Highland, and who have volunteered to help set up, greet, teach, serve, and tear down at the new campus.  I am excited to see what God does through this site, and in this body of Christians at this location.  Through my time at the mothership, and then continuing to learn from head pastor Todd Cook at the satellite locations I’ve attended, I’ve become excited about church again- and excited about participating in a church community again (something I haven’t felt in quite this way for some time).  I feel an excitement at serving and contributing, and about growing personally in the process.  This change in my life has been great.

And I do have food to eat, clothes to wear, a great family around me, friends who encourage me, and a job to do each work day.  In this turbulent economic time, I am so happy to have a job.

With all of this good has come some sorrow and struggle.  My guess is that both the sorrow and struggle will explain themselves to me in time, but in the short run, they have been insolent.

We don’t always know why things work out like they do, but in Him we trust there are answers beyond our questions, and reasons beyond the gaps in our understanding, for He sees what we cannot, and He asks us to trust Him.

Earlier this spring, I fell in love with a long-time friend (with whom I believed there were lots of signs that we would be a great couple), told her how I felt, and then the slow unraveling of our friendship began.  There has been one other woman in my life I have had such strong feelings about, but in this summer’s case, because she is a devoted believer, my feelings were also linked to a reverence for her faith and her devotion to service.  I worked hard this summer to back off from my emotional interest in her, and strove to try and just preserve a friendship with her after my confession was cordially dispatched.  And naturally, I worked hard to try and recover some semblance of the friendship I had known with her before I shared my heart with her.   But there are some things you cannot preserve or revitalize by just your efforts alone.  I’ve probably prayed more about this woman- and more for this woman- over the last 5 months, and often during long runs, than I have anyone else in my life.  And yet, somehow, as time moved forward over the summer, we became estranged.  The last several months have been a long period of grief as I have tried to understand the collapse of this friendship.   Sometimes you love the best you can, and it just doesn’t take, for reasons beyond your understanding.

Still, God answers our prayers, in His time.

There is, yet, a gift in love that we sometimes overlook.  When we are not loved, we can still love, and in that love, we know that He sees us, and what we are trying to be.  He is the God who sees love.

My scriptural mantra this summer has been Proverbs 3:5-6.  Through these last few months, God has asked me repeatedly to remember and to believe the words of these verses.

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.  In all things acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.”

What He asks us to do here is not to understand everything- not to come to rational closure on why things have happened as they have.  Rather, He asks us to look ahead, and to see that in the “what has not yet happened” He is tying the story together still.  In the end, all the pieces will fall in place, and He will let us see the big picture, and answer all of our “whys” about the headscratchers we have experienced.  We are to look ahead, lean on Him, and trust that He will bend it all into the shape it is supposed to take- as we give it all to Him.

It’s been a long summer of running, covering ground, and moving forward.  Sometimes, running is monotonous.  Sometimes, it is downright painful to get up a hill, over an incline.  Sometimes a sinkhole takes out our path and we have to find a new route to cover the ground we need to.  And sometimes you just get tired when you have been running for hours and relief is hard to find.  But any runner will tell you they run because, somehow, it is good for them- and there is a joy found in achieving a goal and covering a lot of ground.

God has been a gracious Coach to me this summer, and an encouraging Pacer. “Trust me”, He reminds me.  “Yeah, there is a lot of course left, and you’ve had some struggles on that last hill- but there is a lot of good scenery ahead, and some detours you are not going to want to miss.”

Yes, Lord, I will trust you.  Lead on.