I Do Well By Water

What a way to spend an afternoon!  Sometimes I have so much on my plate that I have to choose between many things that are needed or good or for good causes.  There are times I can get completely burned out by those things.  But this was different!  When a friend contacted me about an urgent need for a photographer at their event, and it meant spending the afternoon on the lake in a boat, I decided to throw my burn-out schedule to the wind and do something completely different.  COUNT ME IN! 

But it wasn't just a "good thing" for a friend and a charity, it was soul-soothing and nostalgic, too.  The motion of the water, the wind in my face, the smell of everything lakish, and the sun baked serenity ... it all had those good-moment-memory feelings from times on the lake with family.  I was sore (between the muscles I forgot I needed to balance - AND shoot photos! - as well as the pink skin that had several coats of sunscreen which didn't seem to do much) but happy at the end of the day. 

A phrase that kept bobbing through my head was something I heard a minister say when retelling a story of how God provided a new location for her ... "You do well by water."  I've always resonated with that statement and kind of taken it as my own.  I do well by water.  I do well by trees.  I do well by nature.  And it makes me long for the prairies and woods and lakes to explore as I did when I was a child.