Lake

She pulls into the parking lot just minutes after I do, and more than any other, this is our place and the one that's transformed me into a lover of summer. Two summers ago, we very nearly lived here, and I grieved, come Labor Day; I knew what I didn't know, I think: all the coldness and darkness just ahead, and I refer not to anything innately wintry.

2011, Photo by Rachel Huff

2011, Photo by Rachel Huff

Last summer was, hands-down, hardest of my life. I tried to love the lake; I did. I tried to love the lake, the Lord, everyone He's given me to love. I failed often. I could get my heart to neither thaw nor brighten. She loved me, anyway, and I don't mean just a little bit.

2012, Photo by Rachel Huff

2012, Photo by Rachel Huff

So here we are again, another trip 'round the sun, another child among us. He splashes and kicks like Charleigh did two summers ago. Until naptime. My friend offers up her lawn chair: unfolds it flat, parks it in the shade of the lifeguard's stand. 

2013, Photo by Rachel Huff

She had a hard winter, and she's had a hard spring. I look at her shining in the sunlight and think how she's so much stronger than I.

She's waiting for someone, and it's an aggressive wait. I've learned by now: close as she and I are, hard as I pray on her behalf, and even much as I've suffered, myself, I'll never fully understand. Because that's the thing about our hearts: no one (neither our men nor our own mothers) understands them completely save the One who sets them a-beating.

Don't be confused: every mother-to-be enters that waiting place by herself surely as she labors and delivers by herself. It's an awesome thing to witness when you have an idea what you're seeing. My friend is fierce; anyone who thinks her mild-mannered has no clue who she is.

I don't half know who she is, myself, but I have a clue, and she's single-minded and stealthy as a leopard. I pray she'll mess up our summer, next, with a new baby; I'll call that child Lake no matter her real name.

2013, Photo by Rachel Huff