It is hot here, but as I watched channel 7 news tonight, heard the forecasted thunderstorms, and listened to Mr. Difranco talk about the sweltering 92 degrees that it is, I laughed inwardly. I am reminded of last summer and the summer before. The northeast is in me, in my blood and history, and I am in it. But my time spent in the south ruined me for the four full seasons I experience here. I sometimes would just prefer it to be summer for eight months a year and autumn for the final four. I just liked that.

I spent the Fourth of July with my three youngest brothers in Lake Placid. My aunt, who lives in Cape May, New Jersey (where other people vacation) was vacationing in my neck of the woods. I couldn't argue with her invitation to the four of us to join her and her brigade in the mountains to my right. We left early and spent the drive listening to Nickel Creek loudly, getting lost (we took back-roads the whole way), and teaching a spanking new 11 years old the basic principles of driving standard and (don't read this Mama) letting him have a go at the shift stick.

We arrived and spent the day getting properly sunburnt, paraded, hot-dogged, water-logged, and ice-creamed. It really was a treasure and, while the three of the slept, I couldn't keep the thankfulness from creeping out in the form of tears as I drove back through the Big Green to my dad's house. There were no fireworks or sparklers. There was no barbeque and no plethora of desserts featuring marshmellows. There was just us. Us and a favorite aunt. In mountains. Together.

If Independance Day is about being independant, I'll have none of it. If it's about being free, I can't think of a better way to spend it.

Personal pronoun confusion aside, I say this verse to myself much recently:

They ask Me for just decisions, they delight in the nearness of God.
Isaiah 58.2

A friend says to me today, "Can you be so desperate to not miss the will of God that you miss the will of God?" I nod my head from my side of the room, heaviness in my heart, not because I really believe it--I don't. Not ultimately. But it sure feels like it a lot of the time. I center my heart, center the Lord, center my desires, my pleas; I ask for just decisions in the same breath that I ask for His will--thinking that they must be the same. I stumble on theology, truths infused by experience, confirmed by scripture, seared by testing.

I think I'm asking for just decisions, for His will, and find that I'm just asking for it all to come out okay. For me. For us. For this. For you.

I'm asking more for the nearness of God.

Because His will seems far away, feels nebulous. What I need is His nearness. Like a child who trusts the hand that holds his, not the direction in which he heads. What I need is to ask for His will, but be content with His nearness. Delight in his nearness.