august.

 {Photo of Emma Stone by Kurt Iswarienko via Pinterest}

It’s about this time of year I become an absolute waste of human flesh. All I want to do is lay on top of clean white sheets with the fan on high, only interrupted by trips out to the pool. (Though if I really had my way, I’d just live at the beach for the entire summer, traveling back and forth from couch to waves all day long.) A couple of weekends ago, we had a free Saturday — the only one for weeks — and literally the only thing I had any desire to do was lay on the couch and watch Parks and Recreation. For hours. And hours.

This is what happens every August, by the way. The heat becomes unbearable, and every step I take outside results in frizzy hair, melting makeup, and sweat dripping (pouring?) down my back.

I’m reminded, again, of the gift of seasons, even the subtle ones the South experiences. How each winter, I become increasingly ready for spring, and each spring for the warmth of summer, and each summer for the new breath of fall. (Laken mentioned this very phenomenon here.) I am in awe of a Creator who, by His imagination and goodness, never tires of the cycle. He knows precisely when to turn the page, when enough is enough, and He grants us a new season, a new month, a new day. He does it all, over and over and over again.

But not me.

Without fail, there will be at least one day during the week — I’m guessing somewhere around Thursday — when I look at the clock or the calendar and say without fail, “Really? That’s it? It’s only Thursday?” I groan inwardly at the thought that each day, I get up, shower, brush my teeth, dress myself, and head to work. I come home and check the mail and walk the dog and cook dinner. And I do it all again, day after day, and by Thursday, it has become dull. I am ready for a schedule-less Saturday, for date nights and dinners out, for movies and trips to the grocery store.

Yet each season and day is given to us with joy by the Father. He gets up and does it again and again and again.

He is strong where we are so very weak.

“For grown-up people,” writes G.K. Chesterton, “are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.”

My Father is a Father of seasons, a God who exults in the ability to bring us days and months and seasons, over and over, world without end. And my little human heart can barely stand how awesome it is that He does it all because He loves me.