counting gifts
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turning 40.
Well, I turned 40 last month. Can you believe it? My friends and family made it very special with fun food and gifts. Because you’re just dying to know, here are the books I got: The novel in the bottom center, Peach Blossom Spring, is from Book of the Month Club. My brother and his wife and another friend each gave me a 3-month subscription, which means I get to pick out a new book for 6 months. I’m very excited about this, especially because Book of the Month Club often features brand new writers or books that haven’t been released yet. It’s a very sweet…
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giving thanks on january 1.
Happy New Year, dear readers! On Sunday afternoon I pulled dusty storage boxes down from the attic, and turned on our Spotify Christmas music playlist one last time while the kids and I took ornaments off the tree and unwound strings of white lights and rolled up the stockings. I’m usually more than ready to take down decorations and reclaim our living room, but this year I found myself a bit melancholy, not quite ready to say good-bye to the Christmas season. We made beautiful memories this year, like always, and I can’t quite put my finger on why it was so special, except maybe a new feeling of togetherness.…
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moments of thanksgiving.
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sunday gratitude.
Therefore, let him who until now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God’s grace from the bottom of his heart. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together 1. Freedom to worship God publicly. 2. Installing 3 new elders and 3 new deacons this morning. Men and families who are enthusiastic about serving. 3. Seeing friends get plugged into other forms of serving the church, knowing serving will bless them even as they bless others. 4. New faces and very, very familiar faces. 5. Watching people step outside their friend groups and their comfort zones to greet guests and make them feel welcome. 6. The…
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home-from-vacation gratitude.
For dropping the suitcases and bags of sandy swimsuits at the door, and choosing to waste time roaming in the backyard first. For the sunflowers our next-door neighbor gave us. For the teeming garden and salads with lettuce, kale, carrots, cucumbers and radishes, all grown by my husband, who works outside every day in order to create something useful and lovely. For learning to use a sprinkler to keep everything watered. For butterfly bushes, which I pruned down to two-feet in February, now nearly as tall as I am. For butterflies in our backyard. For slugs and cockroaches and mosquitoes. For a living yard, even with…
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august.
Can you believe it is already September? In 5 days my oldest child will be double-digits. I glanced back over my blog entries … posts were kind of patchy this summer, I know. I really struggle with blogs and the internet and social media in general. I think they have wonderful benefits. But they’re also one-dimensional. The things that are most photo-graphable are the fun, exciting things. Not the messes. The tempers. The two-hour period before dinner when I want to pull my hair out. The internet is fun, but it’s not real life. It’s a snapshot. I think we’re at our best when we can stop and realize this,…
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saturday gratitude.
1. a morning at the Farmer’s Market and grocery shopping, all by myself! 2. a chance to talk to interesting people without interruptions from my people 3. the transformation of downtown Columbia over the last 5 years that we’ve been back (how has it been 5 years?) 4. Amie’s bedroom is finished! And she is so happy. 5. we are so, so close to being done with our house project … just a few more items left 6. when I clean the blanket of construction dust from our floors and furniture and books, I remember how easy I have it compared to my friends living in India 7. finding peace…
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sunday gratitude.
1. A member of our building crew brought me this lovely house-warming plant 2. As David says, the overpowering smell of wood floor stain and polyurethane is “the smell of progress.” 3. The last coat was applied this morning! The final inspection happened on Friday. 4. Re-watching two favorite movies: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and The Hundred-Foot Journey 5. I haven’t seen a single slug in our yard since we got the chickens 6. The colorful India-made rug I found for our new bedroom 7. Judah and Amie got invited to a friend’s Harry Potter birthday party and both are overjoyed 8. This morning David preached a sermon that…
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friday gratitude.
I struggled with depression all week, which hits me from time to time. It’s a thick cloud that creeps into the edges of my life — it doesn’t take away my ability to function, it just seems to steal my joy. I’m sure it doesn’t help matters that our house is still in disarray and that David was out of town for a few days. Last month, very suddenly, we lost some friends at our Classical Conversations campus, who died in a house fire. My heart still aches for what happened and I don’t understand it at all. My friend Mandy and her husband died, as well as two of…
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a birthday post.
Hi friends! Yesterday was my 35th birthday! Can you believe it!? It feels like a sort of milestone. I’m halfway to 70! I’m really not one to be sentimental about my kids getting older (I love older kids!), but yesterday I had a sort of earth-shaking revelation: I’m 35. Judah is 9 1/2. That means I’ve lived exactly one half of the life I have with him at home, before he spreads his wings and flies away. A few moments of heart-thumping panic, and then I moved on. Here’s to seizing the next nine years with my boy and choosing not to be consumed by guilt! Here’s to having lived…
