It’s been quite a month!!  It’s good to catch our breath on our 13-hour flight to Kauai today, where we’ll prepare for speaking this weekend by having 3 days of R&R first.  Just what the doctor ordered.

Our hearts are so full as we reflect on the past month and on the incredible ways we have been met by God at every turn.  

The “Campfire” scented candle burning in our Great Room today fills my head with thoughts of summer camping, but the 20 degrees of mercury on our outdoor thermometer reminds me we’re actually in the dead of winter. Writing while in a window-wrapped room, I’m hoping that snow will dance in on this cold stage, but if the forecast is to be believed, there will be no such luck. 

Sitting in Derek and Julie’s cozy living room next to a lit Christmas tree and a roaring (gas-fueled) fire in the fireplace, I’ve finally found the “pause” button. Truly, that button has been “MIA” for the past two months and it feels really good to carve out a few moments to reflect on the the past two months which have been on the huber fast track.

Fall is such a delicious time of year!! It appeals to every sense…crackling leaves underfoot, burning leaf piles, freshly picked apples, jumping in leaves, and seeing an ongoing parade of spectacular colors changing daily. What’s not to love about fall?

There have been years in which Labor Day weekend signals an abrupt end to summer as the crisp to cold winds of fall arrive as if in a hurry.

Not this year. “Dog days” describe most of the month of September and the beginning of October, as summery temps belie the calendar dates, and pools buttoned up for the season seem “missing in action” as the endless summer unfolds.

Our summer ended with huge exclamation points. Invited by our dear friends John and Marilyn Nugent to share their rental cottage with them in Ogunquit, Maine, we enjoyed the unusually warm ocean (67 degrees), fresh lobster off the fishing boats, and miles of walking on the Marginal Way and on the Ogunquit Beach. It was the perfect beach holiday, and we hated to see it come to an end.

“Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart!”    Psalm 34:3

This verses aptly sums up the past month for us as we have been privileged to speak at 4 different family camp weeks.  Though it should go without saying that the deepest desire of our hearts would be fulfilled by a reinstatement of our lifelong ministry at Campus by the Sea, we are so very grateful that our passion for encouraging and strengthening families through family camp found expression again this summer in four wonderful weeks of camp.

It all started at the H.I.M. marriage conference in 2011, when Sonny Vu and his wife Christy were introduced to us.  In the years since, their journey has taken them back to their homeland of Vietnam and our knowledge of them has grown only through third party mention.  The “third parties” began to mention that the Vus would be interested in bringing us to Vietnam for a marriage conference if we were game, and, in the words of Brian Reagan, “…and one thing led to another…” and on June 27, we were on our way to Vietnam!

It’s been quite a month!  Within three days of returning from Lebanon, we were in the air again, this time to California.  Our 2.5 week trip there was in jeopardy when a visit to my primary care physician revealed that the pneumonia (which had been diagnosed in late March, but which we thought had been successfully treated) was still alive and amplified. She reluctantly agreed to let me travel, if I promised to do only what I had to do, and rested in between. Armed with antibiotics and a sobering report from the radiologist, we headed west.

After almost a year of planning and anticipating, our two-week ministry trip to Lebanon is now “in the books.” We’re in the midst of flying home from Beirut as I write this, and one of the benefits of this long flight is the opportunity to process and ponder the past eleven days as we partnered with our Evangelical Armenian brothers and sisters in Christ who are serving Him faithfully in this often times unstable part of the world.

After a wonderful week with my mom, I returned to New England for the longest stretch so far in 2018. Home sweet home. I do love it when we land here.

The past few weeks have been a mix of new and old. How blessed we are to have both the traditions of “old” and the challenges of “new."

Three weeks.

Three conferences.

Three typically “warm climate” places with below average temps.

Three visits to Urgent Care.

Three deaths of esteemed friends.

Three snowstorms.

Three times two flights taken.

Obviously, good (and bad) comes in threes.

The 16th annual mid-winter Marriage Retreat is now in the books and we’re still filled with gratitude and wonder as we reflect on the incredible ways God met us collectively throughout the weekend. 

One reunion bled into another as we wrapped up the nuclear Friesen family gathering in Pennsylvania on Jan. 4 and flew to California to celebrate my mother’s 88th birthday with the Collins side of the family. All of my siblings were able to make this grand celebration and, including in-laws, grands, and great-grands, the final count came in at 33. Sadly, Paul was stranded in New England by the blizzard which suspended operations at Logan and Kari and her family were felled by the flu the night before the party, so they were unable to make it.

After rolling in on a red-eye flight today and landing at Logan and going home for only our fifth day in the month of January (which is almost out of days), I am finally getting to what has been a near-the-top entry on my “to-do” list since the third week of December 2017: writing this blog post. I love to write, but I need space and time to do so and, well, that’s been hard to come by in the days that wrapped up 2017 and the ones that have begun 2018. I’ll rely on pictures to “say a thousand words” so this won’t turn into marathon missive.

It is a season of weddings, funerals, and falling leaves. Of football, pumpkins, and sweaters. Of hot soup, warm bread, and apple cider. Of Patriots Bible studies, marriage conferences, and counseling. Of birthdays, anniversaries, and memories.

This year, it is also a season of hurricanes, floods, fires, and shootings.