Good Morning, Summer

It's Thursday morning, our first back after our mini-vacation up north. Jay will head to work this afternoon but the Mr. and I are still off for a few more days. As usual, I'm the first one awake. Have had one cup of coffee and I'm on to my second. It's almost seventy degrees here at 8:15 this morning and I've opened the windows wide and pushed back the curtains. It's my own little corner of the day. Once the Mr. and daboyz are up and around, the windows will be slammed shut, air will be cranked high and the quiet will flee to parts unknown.
This morning, home with everyone, has me thinking about my plans of childhood. Does one ever outgrow the child's perspective of summertime really being meant for three month's off? It always assaults my sensibilities that I, or my children, should work during the dog days. As for the Mr., his working doesn't bother me ;)
Back in my little girl days, the plan for many years was to become a school teacher. I never changed the plan so much as didn't plan to fulfill it very well and it rather slipped through my fingers. Young marriage, babies right away and lack of determination on my part kind of pushed the teacher plan back into a place where it wasn't so much a plan as a wish, and then a sigh for unfulfilled dreams. This morning I was again reminded that people should not get up and go to work on muggy breezy summer mornings. They should sip coffee and then slowly rouse themselves to gardening, walks and grilling dinner in the twilight. It all fits quite nicely if one is a teacher who has summers off, as God intended. Perhaps a short jaunt to a local state park for a beach-side picnic or on a very hot day, a stroll around a cool cavernous museum. Ahh, this was all the stuff that was supposed to be.
Well, come Monday morning at 5:00 my alarm clock will sound and it's into scrubs and back to the hospital at which I never planned to work. And the remainder of Monday through Fridays of summer will be sacrificed to nursing. Summer will roll away into Fall, Winter, Spring...the demarcation between the seasons is no longer announced with holiday vacations or bulletin boards to announce the changes. All the stuff that was supposed to decorate my life has been relegated to childhood thoughts on a top bunk during summers off.
I won't tell you that on humid summer mornings like this, I don't have a plate of regret with my coffee. Happily, God is a good God and so what he gave me despite myself is a job I enjoy with people I like that pays pretty good for an unemployed school teacher masquerading as a nurse. I don't dread going to work in the mornings. I'm proud of myself for what I've done with my days.
I'll tell you a little secret, I suspect that this is indeed God's plan. I don't know why he'd make such a plan. But since I've always been his, I am subject to his hand on my life and have more than once realized he steered me away from my own daydreams into the reality I was born for. This is the glory of Christianity. To live in this day and know it has been planned all along by someone greater than myself. It is a life that allows summer morning second thoughts to roll away and peace to settle in. Because I am his, even my missteps are figured in the map that leads me home.
This morning I'm thinking about regrets and deciding that on a such a special day there are better ways to spend my time. Being that these perfect summer mornings are so few and precious to a working girl like myself, I won't waste it on wishing but on gratitude for the moment. I think regret was made to turn us back to Jesus so we would be spared the weight of it.
As the world awakens to these precious warm and breezy mornings, I realize I have nothing to regret. It takes up moments meant for worship.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

Pic: Northern Michigan sky over Lewiston. Summer morning, 2006