This mound of dirt gives me hope.

We live behind the elementary school and pass by both the middle and high schools on our way to most everywhere we go, and we've watched work being done all summer long at all three schools.  The middle school is almost done. The replacing of the parking lot lights at the high school looks like the rapture happened because they took the old ones down about three weeks ago and have done nothing further.  At the elementary school there's been a flurry of activity, too.  They dug up the pavement in the bus rider road and repaved.  They've boarded up every glass door, awaiting replacements. And just this week, the dirt arrived.

It's the end of July and summer is getting by me way too fast this year.  Perhaps it's because I've been off at work this summer for the first time since I had kids.  Perhaps it's because I'm older, my kids are older, and time really does go by faster and faster the older you get, just like they say.

This is supposed to be the point in the summer when moms are tired of the mess, the constant food, the bored bickering.  Moms are supposed to be ready for routine and schedules and bedtimes again by now, but I'm not. And it's all going to end in four more short weeks, ready or not.

Then I see the new mound of dirt. The playground is a pile of dirt, one last project getting under way before the start of school.

There is still time this summer for more.


My house is also a pile of dirt:  the dirt created by a family who is simply, beautifully there, and the dirt that we all are because that's what God used to craft each of us from. So I'm embracing dirt, heaping it up as high as I can these last few weeks, because soon it will all be leveled out and my kids will head back out to the playing fields of their school days soon enough.