A Place They Want to Be
I continue to learn how to build a beautiful and joyful home environment where people want to gather. I coax my teens out of their bedrooms with hot tea and some fresh treat always ready after school. I’m learning how to make spaces where they want to linger with me and others. Lately, it’s keeping environments […]
Little Joys
On difficult days of long work hours–whether parenting or at a desk or any other kind of overwhelming, tiring labor, I think about building in little, joyful activities that help the day more along. That’s how so many of survived the baby and toddler stages, and it still works. Making a special coffee drink, deciding […]
Eating with the Older Folks
Today I ate lunch with the older and wiser population who meet monthly at my church. I was the special guest of my 85 year old friend. As I loaded my styrofoam tray with all sorts of delicious but rather soft foods, I learned about how one must avoid nuts and hard food if you […]
Stuffing Every Moment
My youngest exudes Christmas spirit the moment we allow her to begin playing Christmas music in her room mid-November. By now, she’s outlined her room in twinkling lights. As we decorate for Christmas yesterday, we find her list of Christmas activities to accomplish that day including but not limited to the following: Gingerbread houses, cookie […]
How Not to Live
I’m back to reading E. Stanley Jones more slowly and deliberately to gain wisdom. Today, I reflect on this quote: “Humans beings are in the process of finding out how not to live.” I underline the sentence and record it in my journal to digest the truth of it. Everywhere I look–both in my own […]
Traffic
I’ve blogged in traffic before. You apply all the same remedies: practicing thankful hearts, embracing a peaceful resignation, knowing God works in delay, realizing your whole family learns togetherness in an acute way, and listening to endless Christmas music. It can be annoying and frustrating or cozy and peaceful. We choose. Every moment, we choose. […]
Always a Walk to Take
I love the question, “Do you want to talk a walk?” The best conversations happen on a walk. Thoreau famously said that an “early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.” The poet Wallace Stevens said that “perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” I walk around the lake with […]
At the Best Table
You are right where you should be. All the blessings from Jesus are available to you right now. You don’t need to think about another table, in another place, with other people. Jesus is with you. You are at the greatest table with the Greatest King because you have already been seated with Christ in […]
Give Away Something
I read in an old devotional by E. Stanley Jones about always living “as a witness to the new life.” He writes that we have nothing that has been given to us that we cannot now share. He quotes a writer who said, “When supply seems to have failed, you must know that it has […]
In Dark, Murky, Unclear Places
Today the flair moment comes when a horticulture professor tells us that Kate’s avocado plant will thrive now that it’s in soil and not water. Last summer, we kept the spouted avocado plant in water so long, and it didn’t do well. But we just transplanted a new sprouted seed into dark, nutrient rich soil. […]