A Good Year

For the next ten days here in Southern France, the temperatures day and night here are supposedly not going to stray farther than 19-31 C (66-88 F). We will be spending half that time near Atlanta, Georgia...where the temperatures are pretty much exactly identical. Only probably much more humid, with bigger bugs and more mosquito bites. Oh well, we'll be with lots of cousins, so who cares. Swimming and seeing butterflies in the Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center Tropical Conservatory. We have to remember to wear bright red or pink so the butterflies land on us this time. David and Jason did that last time and got lucky, but Emily and I were wearing dark blue, and no butterflies were interested.

You've possibly heard of the Peter Mayle book, A Year in Provence. Well, for us it's been "A Year in Languedoc-Roussillon" (which is the next French region over to the west of Provence). And our theme now would have to be "They... went home, joyful and glad in heart for all the good things the LORD had done..." (to borrow from 1 Kings 8:66). Only "home" is not really anywhere for us, having now lived in six countries and seven U.S. states between us, so "they went home" will mean "they went to a different new home." God willing. We're still waiting on His providence for that.

But we're "joyful and glad in heart" because our kids learned French, we enjoyed the food, the culture, the language, the weather, the terrain, and two more parts of the Body of Christ (a French one and an international one including British, Australian, French, Dutch, German, and Nigerian hearts), and we expanded our view of the world. As Emily said at dinner last night, "I've had a nice time in France, but now I'm ready to move on." She's been reading a cool kids' booklet about England that our moving company sent her. She's excited to visit British castles and Legoland (30 minutes from our proposed new home). I'm looking forward to living in lush and green forested land as opposed to the arid scrub land around here (although the vineyards, orchards, and the Mediterranean have been lovely as well).

You may be wondering why/how I have time to blog when we only have eight more days at home before the moving van arrives to transport our entire household to another new country. I'm wondering that myself. I guess this is the calm before the storm. We're supposed to be gearing up for the move, but these are languid summer days with basking lizards, inching snails, hopping toads & buzzing bees, a light breeze and a sun-drenched pool (the water is up to 80 degrees - 27 C)...and everyone else is gearing down for summer, especially the schools. So it's hard to get up the energy to be frenzied. And we just moved a year ago, so there's not that much stuff to cull. And not having sold the house yet, we're not shutting everything down (like water, electricity, yard care, etc). Anyway, weekends are for resting, right? It's Sunday. I rest my case.