Only One Cure for the Summertime Blues

Some of you rock the summer. Warm weather, bathing suits and grilling outside; hot fun in the summertime, time to sit back and unwind. In my youth, summer was a glorious time of scorching my skin at the nearby community pool and dousing my hair in lemon juice. My quest for tan skin and blonde hair was a major important undertaking in the 70’s and early 80’s.

Fast forward to now. Even though I’m a cat person, my summer is filled with dog days. Summer lovin’ and summer nights when time flew by are a thing of the far-away past.

You’ve probably heard there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues. The boys of summer are around, but whenever I hear their anthem, it stirs up a mix of nostalgia and unmet longing. Don Henley’s dulcet melody makes me want to sit in a corner and cry.

Maybe it’s that I’ve had many a cruel summer, tearful times during long days and warm nights. I gave my first boyfriend the boot in the summer; he gave love a bad name. Maybe it has something to do with summers filled with weddings, year after year, when love eluded me. The year after I graduated from college, I was invited to twelve weddings—twelve! I was a bridesmaid or attendant in about half of those weddings, at the same time I didn’t have a steady date. I was looking for love in all the wrong places, while my friends found ‘the only one.’

Sometime I’ll tell you all about sobbing alone in a swimming pool, one early summer midnight in Texas. God captured all those tears in His bottle, like He always does. Only that time, I followed the straight line that led from summertime sorrow to satisfying relationship with Him.

Eventually, love found a way. More than 25 years ago, I met and married my hubby and we soon had two kids. Maybe my summertime blues still show up as a reflex, an involuntary reminder of too many summers trying to fill the schedules of small offspring. Don’t get me wrong: we enjoyed some wonderful family staycations, inexpensive adventures, and a few bucket list checks during our kiddos’ childhood summers.

Do you relate? It doesn’t matter what makes your brown eyes blue. If you have blue eyes, you have a head start on the summertime blues! Maybe all this rumination speaks to a deeper sort of longing, a yearning for a vacation with God. Just you and Him.

This post in no way diminishes mental health needs. Get the support you need, whether therapy, medication or a comprehensive physical exam. What I’m describing is something purely spiritual, an emotion and a heaviness that’s come over me in summer since I was young, restless and bored.

Remember my comment about my tears in God’s bottle? I’m pretty sure He’s built a silo to hold all of my tears. Maybe that’s true for you, too. Whatever is causing you to feel summer sadness, before this is the one (summer) that got away, make sure to carve out your own spiritual staycation with God. He’s the only one who can turn circumstances and perspectives God-side up, and bring treasures out of the daylight darkness. And it makes sense, because for all of creation, and for you and me, He’s the object of our adoration and inspiration.