Wade and Wecco went quadding on the weekend. The quad broke down.

The girls and I tidied house and watched “Human Cinderella.” (Scooter’s words. 10 points if you guess the actual title.*see end of post.)

The wind blows. It’s cooler than it should be for July. The girls dress in their skimpiest summer wear and run out to play, then back indoors for layers. Leggings under shorts and hoodies over tank tops. Wecco is the maverick, insisting on pants and long sleeves despite the heat. He doesn’t notice mosquitoes, and comes home studded with bites if I insist on short sleeves. How is he not alert enough to avoid bites on his hands? Oh, for the absorption of child’s play!

My hands are my favourite feature. “Pianist’s fingers,” my mother called them. (It’s a lie. I play poorly.) People watch my hands, deft with pen or brush, confident strokes. Painting Sassy’s face for Canada Day, parade participants eyeing us sidelong. My fingers don’t let me down – they fly to create, stained with ink or crusted with dough. They turn pages, brush hair away from blue child’s eyes, knead work-stiffened muscles at day’s end.

I’m learning that my heart pours out through my fingertips, love in action.

Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts has made me think about praise from a new perspective. The last chapter I finished is based on Romans 8:32: He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? This fear that we have that freezes us in place – the failure to trust, the grasping of self rather than surrender – we are stonewalling a God that sent His only Son into a sin-darkened, hateful world – a world perpetually reeling toward death – to His own certain death. He did this, and we clutch our rights? Voskamp is swiftly convincing me that thanksgiving lies at the heart of faith. Also, my library copy isn’t enough. I’m buying it. For that chapter alone, it’s worth it.

I read two great books lately. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks sounds like a novel but is actually non-fiction, about a woman from the 50′s whose cells started a research revolution – without her or her family’s knowledge. Fascinating, thought-provoking, and very sad. The author, Rebecca Skloot, actually made it easy to read about a very scientific topic with a real human interest angle. The second book was titled The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society, and I might have to buy it just so Grandma can read it. The novel is written as letters – ordinarily this makes for dry reading, in my opinion, but in this case I fell into the book and the characters became vividly real. The book is set in the immediate aftermath of World War II and before reading the novel, I had no idea that the Channel Islands even existed, much less that there was a part of England that was occupied by Germany during the war.

Sassy has read over sixty books in a week. We signed up for the library’s summer reading club and she is gung-ho to read a hundred books. I keep telling her she has nearly two months to do so, but she got excited when she checked in last week and she had read the most books of anyone in the club. Today she found out she’s one of four who have read over sixty books, and though  there are no prizes for reading the most, it’s not limited her motivation. I wonder where she gets her competitive spirit from?

Running isn’t happening much lately. My 5km run has turned into a weekly event. And I eat candy daily, and feel guilty by day’s end. How much better it would be if I placed my priority, my “should have’s” a little more firmly on the things that actually matter? Not that exercise and healthy diet aren’t important, but so much more are spiritual disciplines and the sign language of love in action!

So much more to say. I’ve been storing it up for an uninterrupted bank of time, and this post has taken two sessions and my husband is waiting for me downstairs. We’re watching Horatio Hornblower. I got  it from the library.

*Ever After – did you guess it?