The Long Summer
Read the story first: The Long Summer.
Nugget of Wisdom
A child can carry a heavy load. What a child cannot carry is not knowing what the day will bring.
First General Order
Before beginning, come together as a group to briefly discuss prayer needs and pray for God’s guidance, wisdom, and protection over this time.
Mission
Sit face to face with no distractions, hold hands, and maintain eye contact. Think back to a time in your childhood, typically between the ages of 10 and 13, when you knew exactly what was expected of you. It may have been a summer job, a chore that had to be done every day, a coach, a grandparent, a rule that never changed. It may have been hard. Mine was a trench thirty-six inches deep and a grandmother in a lawn chair with a switch. Or think of the opposite, a time when you never knew what was coming through the door. Either one. This is where you tell your own story. It does not have to be dramatic, but it should be something that affected you deeply. Allow yourself to be led, and tell the story honestly.
Mission Execution
One of you tells the story. The other listens without interruption, without trying to fix it, and without analyzing it. Simply listen and absorb what the other person felt. Then reverse roles. Do not rush the process. When both of you have finished, come back together as a group and talk about what you noticed. Some of you will find that the hardest summer of your life is the one you are most thankful for. Some of you will find the opposite. There is no right answer.
Questions
- Did you grow up knowing what the day would hold, or did you grow up waiting for the explosion? How does that show up in you today?
- What did consistency, or the lack of it, teach you about trust?
- As you listened to your partner, what did you hear underneath the story? Fear, pride, relief, anger?
- Where in your home right now do your words not match your actions? Where do the people around you not know what to expect from you?
- Hard work, compassion, grace, consistency. Which of those four comes easiest to you, and which one do you have to work at?
This Week’s Mission
Pick one thing, together, that the two of you will do every single day this week at the same time. Make it small. A walk after supper. Ten minutes on the porch with coffee before anyone touches a phone. The dishes done together before bed. Write it on the calendar so it is a commitment and not a wish. Then keep it. Seven days, no exceptions.
Consistency is not exciting. That is the point of it. By the end of the week you will know something about each other that you did not know before, because you will have seen what each of you does when the thing gets inconvenient. If one of you misses a day, do not make it a fight. Make it a conversation, and start again the next day.
If you have children or grandchildren in the house, let them see you do it. They are watching whether the day will hold what you said it would.
Prayer Focus
As you close in prayer this week, include this in your own words: Father, let my words have truth when I speak them. Make me steady for the people who depend on me, and give me the grace to balance the hard work with the love.
Drafted for review — not yet approved by Ron.