Life doesn’t slow down. Every day there is an inexhaustible to-do list waiting for me. There are needs and questions pressing in–about homeschool, health, children’s needs, creative projects, this house, community, adventure, prayers and plans for the future… One thing I have learned in my life is that I have to create rhythms for myself…
Tag: joy
When Every Choice Is Too Hard (Podcast #16)
“I am just trying to figure out my life, one day at a time. I am just trying to discern which direction to walk. I desperately want a clear path to follow. Someone to hand me a map and say, “Here. This is your life. You will maximize it if you take this road, turn…
Standing at the Edge of a World
A woman on the verge of birth Is standing at the edge of a world. She moves through the rhythms Of her normal lifeWhile preparing to travel,Led by the loving voice of God,Somewhere no one else can follow.The hidden path that opens itselfOnly once.The passage she aloneCan pass through. As I have been moving through…
Looking Deeply Inside Myself (The beautiful work of journaling)
5:17 a.m. My eyes open in bed. I had a dream that woke first my mind, then my body. My face is pressed against a sweet, softly-sleeping baby. In the dark I lift him up and carry him across the room to place him gently in his crib. He doesn’t wake. A small miracle. I…
First Birthday (love song for a baby)
You came to me from a distant landThe secret place of my innermost beingYou traveled miles and milesTo find me You came in the space between my two greatest sorrows. When the lamp of my womb went out, suddenlyLeaving me with a cold-wind feelingLike the door to every chamber of my heartHad been left blowing…
Vision and Hindsight, A Tale of Two Lists
The year flew by. This morning I was sitting at the kitchen table, lamenting all the things that I meant to do last year–my open journal with the list I scribbled down, wide-eyed, like a child on her birthday, a January ago. Beautiful vision. And just like that, I blinked, and those twelve months are…
Being There (On the Shores of Life and Loss)
A week ago we cried over the body of my beloved Mother. She is gone. This keeps hitting me like ocean waves, one after the other. How it swells. How it breaks. It all seems like a dream. The next day was of course a birthday. My daughter’s third. The only time to cry was…
Singing Out a Baby, the Birth Story of Rune O’Carolan Chester
“I am walking into this labor differently than I ever have before. I am walking into it with a spirit of fight. Not just trying to keep my peace, not just trying to stay calm, not just surviving and getting to the other side. I am walking into this labor with the desire to put…
Joy and Sorrow (How Does Your Garden Grow)
It still hits me in waves. Not like it did last spring. When my little garden was blooming and sheets of rain came down steadily day after day. I drank tea in the music room and looked out over the mint and the marigolds and all the beautiful shimmering living things growing there in the…
Slowing Down This Christmas Season (Creative Family Advent 2018)
Christmas is coming, and I am longing to anticipate it with more wonder and joy. With slowness and purpose, deep gratitude and a supernatural ability to see beyond the busyness into the sacred. I want us to savor these days as a family and make memories that will last well after the childhood years have…
Longing
Longing. This word won’t leave me alone. It first jumped out of the pages of Mere Christianity (by C.S. Lewis) a few weeks ago, and since then, it has worked itself into every book, every movie, and every mini-drama of my life. The word itself can give me the feeling. (((Do you know what I mean?)))…
Kells, My Beautiful Boy
Two and a half weeks ago, we had our first family trauma. Kells (two years old today!) fell off of a step, and his bottom teeth cut all the way through his chin. There was blood everywhere, and he was screaming and crying. We rushed him to the closest ER and had a terrible experience…