Up North

Some places just run through your blood - whether or not you've ever been there before, you get there and something in your soul screams recognition.  Lake Superior is our ocean, the closest expanse of water we can easily drive to, something of the rhythm and serenity and unchangeability of the waves beating against shore soothing the most tousled emotions.  We went, for a brief 24 hour visit, to see Grandma and visit the birthplace of me.  As much as the fields and rolling hills of Wisconsin are home, as much as I love my yellow farmhouse and the simple wildflowers that burst everywhere this time of year, the North Shore is a birthplace of a sort that cannot be replaced.  The Prairie is this way for Aaron...the Lake this way for me.  Our kids are bound to become the stalwart sort, whether they get the Prairie or the Lake genes.

As we returned to civilization, we noted how perfectly our little trip fit with our homeschool unit - navigation.  We sang a little song we wrote for our unit study, over and over as we made our way across the long miles home...

The sun rises in the east,

the sun sets in the west,

it's COLD when you go up north,

it's HOT when you go down south!

...a perfect reminder that, through all the fog and the storms and the wrong turns and the blind paths, the Maker who set the sun and planets in motion is ever attentive to our hearts and longs for a friendship that surpasses all others.  He set the sun to rise in the east and set in the west, a sign for all time that He is there, even when He seems far away. "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." (Genesis 8:22)