Happy to welcome guest blogger, Nicole Unice on her new book, The Divine Pursuit.īecoming a counselor is a weird sort of schooling. I can hold this with me until next summer.
I can’t take it all with me, yet tonight I understand I don’t have to leave here and lose my inner grounding. But still I watch as the colors take over the sky and I hear the waves crash. A bowl of vanilla ice cream with some kind of fruit on top was also usually a requirement. Sunset watching was always an event with my grandparents. Most summer nights I stand at the shore, on the ground, and watch the sunset. In West Michigan my radio choices are somewhat limited and while driving a tried and true Eagles tune began to play… I got a peaceful, easy feeling.and I know you won’t let me down…cuz I’m already standing on the ground. As I have been preparing myself to brace for a long winter in suburbia I have been struggling with this creeping discontentment. It seems selfish and immature to complain to God about living in a safe, beautiful, and prosperous suburban town.
#I am not throwing away my menorah how to
So, how to combat this suburbia discontentment? I believe it is a spiritual discipline to keep discontentment and depression at bay. My soul balks and makes it known that it misses nature and sand and water and sunsets. I don’t want to be boxed in by houses and cement. This quirky ancestral land, this uncommon small town that gathers for three months every year, this blessed and coveted sense of community and belonging is mine.Īnd it is coming to an end for this summer. Everyone knows each other and which kid goes with which family. While I grew up and played with second generation cottagers, my kids now are growing up with third generation. My three kids now run the dunes freely and swim and surf all day in the white caps. My mother and aunt spread Gramma Margie’s ashes on the shore and in the waves of Lake Michigan. When she passed away at the age of 93 we had a family reunion and a service. She would bob on the waves of Lake Michigan tucked in her tube all day. She would drag an old black inner tube down the dune with a rope and an anchor attached to it. My grandmother swam in Lake Michigan almost every day of every summer until she was in her late 80’s. It seems his body gave one last ditch effort to get rid of it with the sneeze and then he did indeed go home. He declined saying to my grandmother, “Margie, it is time to go home.” He walked the short trail through the dunegrass to our cottage, and as my grandmother helped him to bed, he sneezed and he died.
The story goes he finished his supper and was offered dessert. He was having dinner at the cottage next door with lifelong friends.
My grandfather, Strat, took his last breath in this old building. The cottage has become, in a quirky way, our ancestral home.
A blend of English, Dutch, German, French.I have no idea where everyone came from besides central Indiana. I suppose some people have their ancestral land – a village in Germany where they can trace back generations. We all keep coming back summer after summer. We squeeze in when we can cooking in the tiny galley kitchen, lining up outside the one functioning bathroom, and forever negotiating who is sleeping where.Īnd for the most part we love it. Now the cottage makes room for a set of grandparents, my family, and the families of my two brothers. When my grandparents built the cottage they built it for themselves and their two daughters. Over the years repairs and home improvements have occurred, but mostly we all still live and move and have our being in the bones of this old house. Since 1946, when my grandparents built a one-season cottage on the shores of Lake Michigan, my family has been blessed to spend summer months out of the city and suburbs of Chicago. Labor Day weekend has brought the very last days of summer and it has me panicked.
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