And The Seasons They Go Round And Round

In my hunt for some pictures for yesterday's Hodgepodge I came across this photograph-

...and I keep thinking about the way it made my head spin. My heart too. 

That's my oldest daughter in the picture, sitting in the grass in front of Canterbury Cathedral on one of the brightest blue sky days there ever was in the history of England. 

She is seventeen. 

It's funny the way a picture can peel back the years and remind me that once upon a time I had teenagers living in my house. If you have teenagers at home you might wonder how in the world you could ever forget this season of intense everything, but I'm here to tell you time is sometimes blurry in the rear view mirror. 

The now grown women I birthed and adore, the ones I talk to about recipes and books and parenting and politics and culture wars and Jesus and everything under the sun, well they used to be teenagers. Not so long ago they were sleeping in their bedrooms upstairs and eating breakfast at our kitchen table. They were asking for rides or cash or permission, doing homework, dancing, dreaming, and planning their futures.

Was it not so long ago? 

Nineteen summers have come and gone since this photo was snapped. The teenage girl in this photograph went off to uni, worked in our nations capital, married her doctor-captain -major-now civilian, birthed three children, moved west across the country, east across an ocean, then south, then up and over to the midwest and, as I type, is preparing for yet another move. 

A move that will bring her back to the dirt she is sitting on in this photograph. 

England. 

Her hubs will complete a six-month orthopedic surgical fellowship there and she will introduce her children to tea and scones, the English countryside, village life, 1000 years of history, kings and castles, old churches and new experiences. The same language only different.  

The seventeen year old girl in that picture had no idea all the ways God was going to work out His plans and His purposes in her life. 

She's going back to the place she first learned the world is big and change is a given. That when a door opens wide we can walk on through, knowing God goes before us. Knowing too that He meets us there and walks beside us wherever we may roam. 

She doesn't have to wonder if that's really true. She knows it because she's lived it. As a young teenager moving across the pond, as a young wife moving across the country, as a young mom giving birth in South Korea. In all the places and seasons and changes life has brought God's been there. 

I cannot wait to hear how that seventeen year old girl sees England now...

Through her grown up eyes and the lens of time. 

"If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast." Isaiah 139: 9-10