Daily Portion

Moving Day

2010-11-08T11:59:00.000-05:00

I am breaking my long silence blogging in this space to announce my move to another. As I restart blogging, I wanted to try a new home. You can find me at A Daily Portion now on Wordpress. Hope to see you there!

Off the Wagon

2010-07-14T10:01:00.000-04:00

Here I am, posting the obvious. That I have not merely slipped, but tumbled off the photo-a-day wagon. I'm shooting some, because after all, it is midsummer. No shortage of growing-like-weeds boys, blooming perennials, garden produce and green-verged rivers.

But I am not shooting and posting with the attention to glimpses of life I'd imagined. With the intention, whispered under the shutter-click, of capture, capture, capture.

So I'm stopping. There are lots of excuses, lots of new learning curves going on around here camera-wise and computer-wise. Lots of competitors for my creative energy. (Always the pull of beauty-making, word-wrangling, stitching and listening and looking.)

But the bottom line is that I bit off more than I could chew. I began in a burst of surety, already seeing the lovely photo-book I'd hand my family when the project was complete, its pages lit with the ordinary splendor of our family life this summer. And as is my tendency (my IRL friends are getting a good-natured chuckle here) I began to criticize myself when it became clear it just is not happening.

But how about this? How about I turn off the noise of all that criticism? How about I go back to posting here when an image speaks to me, or write down a few words when they tap me on the shoulder to be spoken aloud? How about I climb these learning curves around here in the hope that those offerings will deepen?

How about the next time I try a photo a day, I choose a shorter time frame?

If there is one thing I want the art I make to communicate, it is grace. How can it do that if in the very making I don't experience generosity and good will?

More soon, from this work in progress.. .

Day Thirty-Four: 7.07.10

2010-07-08T15:52:00.001-04:00

July 8
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

I love making a surprise before they even wake up. The day starts with smiles.

Day Thirty-Three: 7.06.10

2010-07-08T15:50:00.002-04:00

No image for today. Just happy to have my boys here at home!

Day Thirty-Two: 7.05.10

2010-07-06T09:03:00.000-04:00

Day Thirty-One: 7.04.10

2010-07-04T17:25:00.000-04:00

Really missing them. But they raised the flag at the fort this morning. All together again tomorrow, with adventures to tell.

Day Thirty: 7.03.10

2010-07-04T17:22:00.000-04:00

It was so fun to have Rachel here, needlefelting in my kitchen!

Day Twenty-Nine: 7.02.10

2010-07-02T12:02:00.000-04:00

love in stitches

Day Twenty-Eight: 7.01.10

2010-07-01T09:47:00.001-04:00

July 1st
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

the best gifts are sometimes the surprises that come in tucked under his arm

Day Twenty-Seven: 6.30.10

2010-06-30T14:28:00.000-04:00

Day Twenty-Six: 6.29.30

2010-06-30T14:25:00.000-04:00

Another pictureless day. But lots of furniture moving, craft room organizing, dust flying. . . picture general chaos, and you've got it!

Day Twenty-Five: 6.28.10

2010-06-30T14:23:00.001-04:00

June 28th
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

marshmallow blow gun-- attempted, tested, tasted!

Day Twenty-Four: 6.28.10

2010-06-30T14:22:00.001-04:00

June 27th
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

an evening visitor

Day Twenty-Three: 6.26.10

2010-06-30T14:20:00.001-04:00

No image today. Somehow, with berry picking, movie going and cake eating, no picture taking happened. So I'll need to add my usual ingredient to any project I pursue: plenty of grace for me.

Day Twenty-Two: 6.25.10

2010-06-25T16:10:00.001-04:00

June 25th
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

A big cooking day around here. I decided tonight calls for a feast-- to say-- hurrah! The weekend has come! We're all together! Yay!

Day Twenty-One: 6.24.10

2010-06-25T16:08:00.001-04:00

June 24th
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

This was one of those gracious moments, when the morning light was just filling the rooms, when I glanced up and instead of seeing the to-do list or the undone projects or the things I'd like to change, I just saw a glimpse of our home. And my first though was, I live in a pretty, happy-looking place.

Day Twenty: 6.23.10

2010-06-25T16:03:00.002-04:00

June 23rd
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

This photo reflects this day-- grabbed in the last moment before I served up the sloppy joes for dinner. No time for white balance adjustment, or, you know, holding the camera straight or anything.

Playing Catch-Up

2010-06-22T19:08:00.000-04:00

So I was able to get things rolling enough over here to post the photos I've taken the last few days. Hopefully Summer Servings can now stay up and running. What follows in the posts below are the last few days of home shots and Upstate roaming. Enjoy!

Day Nineteen 6.22.10

2010-06-22T19:06:00.000-04:00

Day Eighteen 6.21.10

2010-06-22T19:03:00.000-04:00

Blueberries and muffin recipe from The Happy Berry

Day Seventeen: 6.20.10

2010-06-22T18:57:00.000-04:00

Day Sixteen 6.19.10

2010-06-22T18:55:00.000-04:00

Hagood Mill Historic Site and Folklife Center, Pickens, SC

Day Fifteen 6.18.10 (finally)

2010-06-22T18:51:00.000-04:00

The Good Stuff

2010-06-21T19:50:00.000-04:00

These posts look so naked-- just text, no overblown roses or bread cooling on the counter. But I won't dwell on this machine I'm typing on-- its crotchety decline into utter uselessness. There's too much good stuff today, from my feet planted on the cool kitchen floor this morning to the game of UNO Flash we just finished.

We picked blueberries on Saturday, but that makes it sound like work, when really, they hung in bunches like grapes, ripening almost in front of us, and spurred by the thunderhead coming over the ridge, we scored a gallon in fifteen minutes. And then found we had to go back for blackberries before we left-- impossibly huge and so purple they were almost black. We got to watch a tiny dear neighbor stuff both cheeks full last night. And then I stuffed muffins with blueberries this morning. Such joys are there for the gathering, starting at The Happy Berry. . .

The ice cream machine ground to life today for the first time this summer, making a rich swirly vanilla. Mmmmmm. . . .

Boys' laughter seems to be with us from morning until night-- and I love to hear these brothers enjoying each other. . .

The driveway is full of the rubbery thunk thunk of dribbling, three point line drawn with sidewalk chalk, boom of the bounce off the backboard. . .

We have a standing appointment with Masterpiece Mystery every Sunday evening, and now we get to geek out to History Detectives on Monday night as well. PBS rocks!. . .

I love summer music that makes me feel like Grace Kelly in a convertible. Meaghan Smith fits the bill. Try "Five More Minutes," or "Here Comes Your Man". . .

This one you'll have to take my word for for now, that after a dry spell, after kind of dragging myself to the viewfinder, the discipline of shooting every single day is bearing fruit. Not necessarily in the quality or uniqueness of the images I'm making, but in the specific alchemy I can feel when I lift the camera, that last second before I take the shot, that moment of suspended utter silence. Something that's been missing for awhile has slipped back into that space. It is something like assurance that yes-- the images I make are how my soul speaks to the world.

So take my word for it. All the summer servings are here-- I'll share when I'm able.

Press Pause

2010-06-20T09:59:00.000-04:00

The photography goes on at the Circle K, a.k.a. Chez Daily Portion. Sadly, due to our dying computer, photo posting is on pause for right now. I will continue to shoot every day-- the weekend has already been full of blooming perenials, old millstones, and ripe blackberries. All to be shared at a later date. In the meantime, I'll look for some words about these summer days, to tide me over.

Day Fourteen 6.17.10

2010-06-17T18:36:00.000-04:00

the worlds they make. . .

Day Thirteen 6.16.10

2010-06-16T19:34:00.000-04:00

These shots tell the story of this week-- bright, hot sun during the morning and early afternoon that opens the daylilies and makes us shut the drapes, bakes the clothes on the line and the garden plot in its fence and reddens the tomatoes and stretches the beans green under their scratchy green leaves. Then the roll of dark clouds unfurls from the edges of the sky, from the top of the mountain, and the house is thrown into a leafy, windy, early twilight. And the rain rushes down and the thunder rumbles and we are inside with our books and games until the new day stretches its gold fingers over the window and taps us good morning with heat and light.

Day Twelve 6.15.10

2010-06-15T09:51:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago we discovered a nest and eggs in one of John's old work shoes in the carport. This is the best shot I could get, wary of getting too close and frightening the little mother. She seems to tolerate us and our tools and ferrying grocery bags and rattling keys very well, but we want to see her hatch this little family.

Day Eleven 6.14.10

2010-06-14T16:42:00.000-04:00

drawing the shades against ninety-three degrees

Day Ten 6.13.10

2010-06-14T10:27:00.000-04:00

On the lake with friends-- a gorgeous day all in gold and blue and white.

Day Nine 6.12.10

2010-06-14T10:19:00.000-04:00

Sign of a good morning of thrifting: a loaded laundry line in the afternoon.

Day Eight 6.11.10

2010-06-11T15:41:00.000-04:00

Bookcase with a new coat of paint = a happier corner

Day Seven 6.10.10

2010-06-10T14:47:00.000-04:00

Day Six 6.09.10

2010-06-09T15:27:00.000-04:00

summer reading

Day Five 6.08.10

2010-06-08T11:06:00.002-04:00

This might look like a Gracie-cat. In reality, this is what a missed shot looks like. When I left the room for the camera, the kitty was in full sprawl, the glory of her furry belly on abundant display. By the time I got back, she was in this pose of disdain and decorum. Better luck next time.

Day Four 6.07.10

2010-06-07T13:45:00.000-04:00

Today is really amazing-- like a gift from April to these early days of June. A brisk breeze for line drying many many small pairs of shorts and t-shirts, with a bright sun and deep blue sky. A kind neighbor with a huge hydrangea bush who said, "Sure! Cut some anytime!"
A thrifted skirt and a bright pink t-shirt, grilled cheese for lunch and Apples to Apples. Curtains pulled to make the cool last. Boys in the treehouse, high enough to catch a breeze, and mamma about to follow with her camera. Another day pinned to a line sagging with good weight already.

Day Three 6.06.10

2010-06-06T17:55:00.000-04:00

Fresh cut grass, blue sky, pancakes for dinner.

Day Two 6.05.10

2010-06-05T21:21:00.000-04:00

Taken through the windshield, at the end of a good day. Boys tired from swimming, quiet in the back.

Summer Servings: Day One 6.04.10

2010-06-04T10:44:00.000-04:00

I've been really tempted before by photo a day, 365 kinds of projects. But I am wired like a lifelong schoolgirl, and January just isn't a new year to me-- the calendar moves at a clip from late August to early June, then blessedly slows for weeks of easy, lazy days.

I need summer. The grid of schedules and homework and stricter bedtimes that lies over autumn and winter and spring is blessedly lifted, and we ride on a leisurely tide of time, moving in and out through massive, multi-day LEGO creations, messy art projects, ice cream cones and Farmer's Market rummages. We read our books, legs flung over arms of sofas, we wait for bread to rise, and zigzag blueberry rows for the plump and sweet. Most days, the only urgency comes when thunderstorm clouds begin to darken a loaded clothesline, or a requested book comes in at the branch library with our name on it.

These are the days of reconnection and recommitment. We reclaim the pace of life this little tribe feels called to, the pace we have to push against the dayplanner to maintain the rest of the year. Finally the long twilights and ripening tomatoes and country roads winding in low golden light are in cahoots with our ambling stride.

So I' going to try to capture an image or five each day of this summer, a record of the mundane glories of our simple days. Yesterday, within an hour of one another, school bus and carpool ride released my boys from the halls of elemenraty school into the fields of summer. We stretched out together in the family room and prayed our gratitutde for the year passed and asked grace and blessing for the days to come.

Morning on the first day of summer, cinnamon rolls that had been hidden in the freezer since our last IKEA errand, and a requested game of Monopoly. This is today's portion.

Who's Driving the Bus of Unkindness?

2010-05-14T11:53:00.000-04:00

My seven year old got off the bus, the bus he endures to come home to me, the blessedly few moments of pokes and jeers that his first grade heart takes in and replays. And he tucked his hand in mine as we walked up the hill toward home and said, "That bus should be called the bus of unkindness."

Our boys know what mean sounds like. But they also know what the absence of kindness sounds like. The easy, careless malice and what it sows, sprinkled through a day. At home we encourage them to encourage each other, to listen to the sound and tone as well as the content of their words. An eyeroll and a sneer can feel like a slap, and we want shelter from those things here.

The same goes for their mutterings to self, when a drawing isn't going well, when the LEGOS won't snap together to match the envisioned masterpiece, we intercede if we start to hear, "I'm so bad at this." "I can't do anything with this." "I'm not a very good artist." We don't veer into empty praise, but just encourage trying things another way, trying another medium, taking a refreshing pause. Taking a deep breath. Remembering to be kind to ourselves. Remembering this should all be fun.

This is one of those posts that practically wrote itself when I was doing yard work this morning. And it would not stop asking to be typed in. Becuase I am great at this with my kids. Great at understanding the huge impact of the tapes we play in our heads. Passionate about not wanting them to short circuit a moment of their joy or glorious promise with a spoken defeatism.

I'm also great at berating myself. Especially this body that has carried me through over 38 years. The words I apply to it in tbe mirror land like blows. "Pasty. Pudgy. Fat." I see the extra pounds and the skin that won't tan, no matter what. The eyes that jiggle and the one that is ever listing off to the side, the eyes that won't let me drive a car or see clearly the faces of my beloveds from a distance. It doesn't take long before I extend this kind of attitude beyond my physical self, "Whay would she want to be you're friend." "You're a dork." "Why'd you say that?"

What I'm not seeing, as I can smell the diesel of my own unkindness bus, as I am both behind the wheel and helpless in the middle of the road, is the strength in this body. It gave me my two great gifts to the world. It is not all it could be, but I'm making it stronger, I'm feeding it better. These eyes with all their limitations let me capture beyond what I can see, and they can always detect when my kids' hearts are uneasy or their spirits are low. What I'm not saying on those tapes in my head is that I am a woman becoming, not an unfinished and rejected prototype, but a living, breathing piece of art in the making. Body, personality, soul are all in process.

I was talking with a friend about navigating the waters of developing healthy body- and self-image in our kids as they edge toward adolescence, and an old truth I read in a parenting book came back to me, "You cannot impart what you don't possess." Now, I've been growing this family long enough to know that, thankfully, this is not completely true. Grace intervenes, over and over, thank goodness.

But it is partly true. What our kids absorb most deeply flows from what they see us living ourselves. That is the melody that surges stronger than the lyrics we try to sing to them. They hear every note, feel every beat. If they are really to learn to challenge themselves while being gracious, to accept shortcomings and keep showing up, to really know that we are all on a long journey and need to enjoy our own companionship on it, it has to come from watching me make that journey too.

So I am going to try to play some different tapes in my head, get off the bus, talk to that woman in the mirror like I would to one of my treasured friends, real and honest, leavened with grace and care.

Here

2010-05-05T07:54:00.001-04:00

I was standing at the coffee pot. About to pour a second cup, the cup that I actually taste, as I consider and order my day. The one to savor mid-morning. And I felt that moment, my feet especially firmly planted on the tile, the wood warm beneath my fingers, the leaves unrolling on the pecan trees outside-- I was truly present in that moment. It was breathtakingly simple, and elusive for me. I was not replaying a broken conversation from the week behind, mentally navigating the competing plans and schemes for the weekend to come. I was caught neither in anticipation nor regret. I smelled coffee, I felt good, comfortable sandals on my feet and saw spring coming up the hill to meet me outside. Inhale and exhale.

For a woman who lives in her head a lot, this kind of moment is a gift of grace, but over time, I've seen that I can prepare to receive the gift, that I can nurture and surround myself, and everybody who lives here, with ingredients to help us plant our feet and be, simply, HERE.

So, this is what here looks and sounds like around these parts lately:

Carrie Newcomer's Music: Constant rotation around here. I love her most recent album, and a click on the link will take you to her website to hear clips. ("I Don't Know Its Name" is an invitation to experience the wonder of the moment before you.) Geography of Light and Betty's Diner still have my heart as well.

Frontline The exactingly researched and produced PBS investigative news series, not the flea preventative. (Though I am not pro-flea.) I am always pleased when Frontline does a program on a topic I'm already interested in, because the quality and lucidity of their reporting is so solid, and because John and I always have wonderful conversations after we watch. After a mom-day of Silly Bands and LEGOS and laundry, it gets my brain firing in other directions.

I can't remember when I found Ann Kroeker's blog, but even before I got my copies of Not So Fast and The Contemplative Mom, I felt that whole kindred spirit vibe. Ann writes with a great combination of warmth and seriousness, devotion and practicality. Her words have helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin, and in the shape of our family life.

Mark Bittman-- Someday, other library patrons, I will return The Minimalist Cooks at Home. But not today. Definitely not before the weekend. Check with me next week. I love this guy. He is all over my Amazon wish list. His combination of simple, flavorful recipes, a total lack of foodie pretension, and his newest book that unites healthful eating with environmental responsibility are giving me a renewed zest for the kitchen.

100 Cupboards Just when my boys and I needed the perfect story to read aloud together, the one that absorbs us, the one that we cannot wait to return to, I read of this book, as I have so many good things, at Diane's A Circle of Quiet. (Diane is why I started reading Wendell Berry, so she sows good seeds.) This mystery is wrapped in vivd sensory detail and the characters are strongly drawn. I am delighted it is first in a series.

Spring is here. Winter was full of closeness and coziness, summer will drip delight in melted ice cream and salt water. But who would want to miss this glorious here?

What does your HERE look, sound, smell, taste like?

You Can't Un-Know What You Know Now

2010-04-13T08:58:00.000-04:00

I'm going to have to stop watching documentaries.

Better quit reading books too.

Boys are very interested in what this guy is up to. Best nip that in the bud.

Knowledge is dangerous. Not in the "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" sense, but in that some kinds of knowledge compel change. Inconvenient, question asking, paradigm shifting change.

Awhile ago I became convicted about how I was approaching purchasing our food. Always frugal, I got really interested in couponing. Coupons can be wonderful things-- manufacturers use them to encourage consumers to try products, and they can add up to quite a savings in the checkout line.

Not a thing wrong with that.

But when I go after a thing, I do it with gusto. The problem was never the slip of paper entitling me to 55 cents off a product, it was that cost came to loom larger than almost any other criteria when I selected the foods we'd be eating.

Not a lot of coupons for fresh spinach. Many many coupons are for convenience products, and I found myself in a cycle of buying them. Which was good, in a way, because the time and energy my pursuit of savings took up sure didn't leave much time for scratch cooking. And even though I knew I was bringing home lots of HFCS, sodium and other preservatives, getting two of a filling thing the boys would eat for 40 cents a pop Always. Won. Out.

We're a single income family. In the interest of having both a parent at home full time and a simple life, we've already cut a lot of the extras. We don't have cable or a latte a day habit. But we're starting to look hard at how we spend our food dollar. At local farmers. Asking what our beef has been eating before it comes to our plate. Looking at what changes we can really make.

I feel daunted. A lot will be changing in our kitchen, and maybe on our monthly budget spreadsheet too. But there's also some eagerness there, some excitement about putting our minds and money to what we've been learning. And that beats any lingering nostalgia I have for all I didn't used to know.

Photoplay: Show Up and Let Go

2010-04-11T14:50:00.000-04:00

I'm feeling thankful for Internet prompts that keep the creative kick in the pants I seem to need coming. This is Photoplay, via High Calling Blogs and Claire B's lovely space. That assignment was to share a photograph that reflects a life lesson I've learned.

When I clicked the shutter on the photo above, I didn't see the particular way the beam of sunlight strikes and illuminates the tips of the petals in the foreground. The detail that divides photograph from snapshot, the moment that was different a moment later when a leafy branch outside shifted or the sun rose a fraction higher, I never saw.

All I knew was that my husband had given me this bundle of exquisite tulips, that arranged themselves with the easy grace tulips always do, and that the morning light was washing into the kitchen with its daily gold. I had a camera, and before the breakfast dishes were done, before the floor was swept, the plans made, before the phone could ring, I lifted viewfinder to eye, held a breath. . . steady. . . and snapped.

This is a life lesson photography teaches me over and over. Just show up. Show up with the best equipment, the steadiest hand I have. Take a moment, before the urgent demands my attention, and take the shot.

And then, let go. Sometimes, sometimes I can account for every painstaking decision that led to every nuance of the finished print. But really, for me, the player with words and images, that's not much fun. The very best shots, the sweet ones, are a surprise. Either the best part only comes to light later on the computer screen, as above, or an image will hold a sacred meaning for someone who views it, that I didn't anticipate. Didn't intend. Can only be grateful for.

In making art, in making my life itself, it's the gracious surprises that carry the light. But I'd never know them if I didn't show up, lens or pen or heart in hand. Steady. . . . snap. "Thank You."

Morning, Nine Years Later

2010-04-05T08:12:00.000-04:00

For the Random Acts of Poetry prompt, via Seedlings in Stone and High Calling blogs, the assignment was to take a few words from another poet's poem, write a sentence, and break it into lines to make a new poem. My words, "a splash of water on the face," were taken from "Morning," by Billy Collins.

Morning, Nine Years Later

When I go in to wake you,
the length of you beneath the quilt
is a shock to me, a splash of water
on the face, a startling tap on the shoulder
in a dusky room
where I still imagined it was just us
rocking
you in the center
of my arms' circle
unbroken.

Random Acts of Poetry: Streetwise

2010-03-16T07:38:00.000-04:00

For the RAP prompt at High Calling Blogs, brought by LL:

West Washington

At 33 degrees, homelessness
has an address
waiting on this street
bags and bedrolls
bundled in the yield
of the clothes closet,
a dozen old winters.

33 is plenty cold on this street,
but that's no magic number
no door-opening charm.
33 needs to be glazed
with a degree down shift-
sheen of ice. Then there's light,
warmth, meal, shower, cot,
new morning mercies begun
on a pillow more like mine
not made on West Washington.

Filling the Bellies

2010-03-15T13:33:00.001-04:00

Hello, and happy Monday! It is a happy one here in SC, because the sun is out and spring is definitely headed our way!

One of the tasks that awaits me at the beginning of each week is menu planning. I take stock of freezer and cupboard and calendar, and figure out dinners for each night. I try to balance a good routine ( spaghetti works well on Cub Scout night) with trying new recipes to add to the rotation.

Mel at My Kitchen Cafe has been a great help with recipes that are delicious, family-pleasing, and pantry-friendly. There are main dishes, desserts, breads and side dishes. She also has posts on menu planning and pantry staples.

I'm not linking to a specific favorite recipe because I've tried many, many of hers and they've all come out well! I just encourage you to head over and explore-- she might have just the thing to make for dinner tonight. We're having this.

Happy cooking!

"I want a brighter word than bright. . . "

2010-03-10T12:31:00.000-05:00

I remember my Norton Anthology of Poetry, spine broken and frayed in a hundred places or more in high school. Eyes hard upon the page I inhaled the poems we cut into convenient bites in class. With that adolescent certainty that turns its head from shelves of literary criticism I was sure no one had ever heard those lines as I did, felt them in fingertip and collarbone and the soles of my feet. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, John Keats. I loved them. I still do.

This week I have treated myself to a film translation of that early love, the movie Bright Star that depicts John Keats and the woman he loved and by whom he was inspired, Fanny Braun. I don't think I've seen a more visually beautiful movie since Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility. The colors are stunning, the natural world always present, even indoors with blowing curtains and landscapes glimpsed like paintings through the windows.

Jane Campion does not only create an enchanting setting, she takes the approach of placing Fanny at the center of the movie. Rather than being overshadowed by Keats, Fanny emerged as the character I most wanted to know, who captured eye and ear in every scene. A sense of Keats himself came to me chiefly through his poetry, woven throughout the movie, and quotations from his letters.

Anyone who knows the tragically narrow parenthesis of time that enclosed John Keats' life can imagine that there is not a conventional happy ending here. But there is recreated the very natural and emotional setting that inspired the poetry that lives still. As well, there are interesting questions of love and art, boundaries and loyalty that arise as Keats' friends try to protect his genius, future, and finally his very life.

The best part about a movie like this for me is that it adjusts my vision, refreshes my ability to see artistically. To pick up the pen or lens or needle. . .

Waking Up

2010-03-08T09:53:00.000-05:00

Shaking out the rugs around here, and putting the sheets on the line, blogwise and homewise. Who could do anything else after such a weekend in the South, with warm days and the sunshine and a big platter of fajitas and boys in t-shirts smelling like mulch and sky?

So I've updated a few links to what I'm reading, to what's playing on the CD player in the kitchen. I'm contemplating opening the windows. I'm celebrating a few steps farther along remodeling road thanks to my tireless husband.

And I'm thankful, for muscles that work, for taste buds and warm coffee, for eyes that miss a lot but saw the hyacinths poking up. For all the good behind and before with another season coming on.

Mamma at Winter's End and a Much-Needed Tonic

2010-03-03T10:05:00.000-05:00

Yesterday it was snowing hard here and today it is all gone. Though lacy white days are rare in South Carolina, I don't regret its melting. Morning found me perched at the edge of my lettuce bed, hoping for some green unfurling. Even our short Carolina winter has seemed long this year.

This mamma is weary this week. It feels like that last push, though the final steps that will allow us to put our house (mostly) back together. Though to the days when the boys can be outside until all their pent up energy is spent. Through piles of jackets and hats to open windows and breezes pulled through winter stale rooms. I'm ready.

That's why this post from Molly today was just the reminder I needed. This is a long business we're in, this raising of kids. This participation in the shaping of character, this front row seat to God's masterpiece-making is no sprint. And yet sometimes I want to see progress like some kind of corporate auditor, barking about sluggish sales figures.

Again, I have to slow down, I have to remember that the boy who never NEVER remembers to wipe the sink is the same boy who gave his brother such sweet encouragement with his school project. That the non-stop questions come from the avid curiosity I long for them to have. That all the messy stuff, the stuff I don't know how to handle, the moments when I throw up my hands at my own incompetence are all part of their becoming. And mine. After all, I'm one person too-- the mommy who became shrill over scattered Legos hurried to make a homemade treat when they were sent home early for snow yesterday. This woman filled with so much self-doubt is sometimes given, in a burst of grace, the exact right words to say.

So, grace to all you mothers out there. Its a long journey. Today Molly came alongside me and my steps are a little lighter.

My Subtraction Process

2010-02-17T09:12:00.001-05:00

There is nothing new here. This is pretty much a compilation of most of the home organization books and articles I've read, because I've gleaned a lot of useful information from books, magazines and bloggers.

That said, this is also about being honest with yourself about the reasons you keep the stuff you have. More than any labeling tip or filing system or space plan, that has been my indispensable tool as I've sorted through what may or may not find a home in our newly refurbished spaces.

I used to fall into the trap of thinking that I would not have a stuff storage problem if I had more space. More room. Another room. Then I saw a few of those home organization shows featuring folks with four times the square footage we have, buried in piles of mail and sports equipment and knickknacks, and had to abandon that myth.

We keep stuff for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with beauty or usefulness. We keep it because someone we care about gave it to us. We spent money on it, and though we know we will never use or wear it, though we've grown to loathe the sight of it, we keep it because we're guilty about having bought it. We cling to an item because it was "such a good deal," despite the fact that it never worked out the way we'd imagined. Or maybe we keep a thing because it appeals to an image we'd like to have of ourselves, but one that never plays out in reality.

That last one is perhaps the toughest to come to terms with. We've all heard that you can toss the thing yet cherish the giver, that money spent is gone-- don't give free rent to an unwanted thing. That a good deal isn't a good deal if it doesn't work well for you.

But sometimes we make purchases for a skill, personality aspect, or even life we'd like to have, but that just isn't us. I'll give you an example. I am a fairly serious baker, but not a fussy one. I love to make fat loaves of bread, pans of cinnamon rolls, a simple, honest pound cake, but don't ask me to roll out anything, pipe anything, or do anything fiddly or fussy. So while it makes perfect sense for me to have two sets of measuring spoons and cups for marathon baking days, I can let go of the boxes of largely unused cookie cutters and pans for delicate madelines. The cake decorating set was a fun idea, if only fancy frosting didn't turn to goop in my hot little hands.

Putting those items into a donation box requires that I let go of more than metal though, There's that image of myself, prettily aproned, turning out dozens of Martha-worthy Christmas cookies shaped and iced and spangled to perfection. Making a sugar glazed memory with the boys straight out of Country Living. But letting go of those imagined snapshots is also embracing who I've really turned out to be in the kitchen- forthright and good as parmesan pizza crust, a chicken pot pie, or the pumpkin chocolate chip muffins Sam clamors for.

The same rule can be applied to clothing, decor items, even books. These are, after all, our homes, not stages set for an audience to see. As we move through our rooms, we should be seeing the things that delight our eyes, or help us make, play, do, create, think. Truly, a reflection of the authentic people who live within the walls.

So a little soul searching might be required to do the best closet cleaning. Rejoice in it. Keep your knitting basket close at hand, especially if you sent the sewing machine to Goodwill. The camera might need its own hook, while the watercolors would make a niece smile. Who knows what your open hands might do next, what tangible dreams you've made room for. . .

The Art of Subtraction

2010-02-16T10:24:00.000-05:00

Always before, when we have upended our home with some all-consuming repair or improvement project, I've had a secret weapon. Last door on the left, end of the hall, my little craft room that has hosted infrequent guests was always ready to receive the piles. Piles of displaced useful things, yes, but also the piles of my "pretties," the decorative bits and pictures, the knickknacks that might or might not find a home in the newly fashioned space when it was completed. The craft room piles bought me time. Time to not decide what really would not go back, what was no longer working well, what had never worked the way I imagined. Time to put of cleaning out, letting go, making the tough calls.

As we started emptying the kitchen to repair and replace, it hit me. Arms loaded with plates on wall hangers and framed photographs, I realized that due to the messy and drafty work on the master bath, the home for my piles of pretty was currently occupied by our queen sized bed, moved into my craft room from our rightful bedroom.

In case you have not measured one lately, the dimensions of a queen sized pencil post bed are roughly that of a aircraft carrier.

For the week of construction, teetery stacks of decor bristled from every corner of the living / dining room. Where we were eating all our meals. Where the boys were doing all their homework. Where much of the life that was displaced from the kitchen was happening. Made me more than a little nuts.

You see, piles out of sight, down the hall, in the corner of my so-not-pristine-anyway craft room used to bother me not at all. Out of sight out of mind! But piles in my face, in my way, stacked in the only room of the house that could have been halfway sane convinced me that there was no way-station for the no-longer useful or beautiful.

So when the heavy construction was over and the time came to fill cabinets and decorate walls, I was ruthless. As I considered each item, I faced the internal dialogue, of how much I paid for it, how much I had once liked it, well it might be useful sometime, what a good find it was, who gave it to me. . . and silenced it, packed a Goodwill box.

I dreaded the task, but really found it liberating, so much so that when the dust has settled (literally-- if sheetrock dust were money, I'd be rich!) I'm going to look all over the house for those homeless, once-loved things, and have a day of reckoning. It will be wonderful to have more cleared out space, and no messy little secret stash at the end of the hall, but I also love the idea of looking around every room in our home and seeing only that which we "know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

One shelf, closet, drawer at a time. . .

What Love Looks Like From Here

2010-02-13T20:02:00.000-05:00

Musing back some years, and from my seat tonight, and into tomorrow. . .
what love looks like from here. . .

Love looks like a uniform, and a smile, and a promise. . .
Love looks like long hours of hard work. . .
Love looks like a weary hallway path, nocturnal pacing with a tiny son on your shoulder, tired mother sleeping. . .
Love looks like bowls of popcorn and movie nights. . .
Love looks like Jan Karon books, bought the day they appear, brought home to a wife whose thanks will be a nose buried in the pages until the end. . .
Love looks like garden beds, and tall sunflowers, pole beans and cherry tomatoes. . .
Love looks like a fancy camera in a Mother's Day box, from a man who hesitates to spend $5 on himself. . .
Love looks like hours of playing chess with sons we rocked only yesterday. . .
Love looks like patience with insecurities, changes in paint color, and a self-taught cook. . .
Love looks like country drives, the view of the Middle Saluda from the bridge at Jones Gap, Happy Berry blueberries and Beechwood strawberries. . .
Love looks like about five thousand cups of morning coffee. . .
Love looks like a treehouse built on the hottest two weekends in August, for boys who will ambush you from it. . .
Love looks like hands with drumsticks, with sleepy boys lifted, with hammer and drill, with tissues to dry my tears. . .
Love looks like laughing at 30 Rock, talking long after Frontline, West Wing DVD marathons and evenings quiet but for pages turning. . .
Love looks like Nanci Griffith tickets, Sting on the lawn, Carrie Newcomer plans and EFO at the Handlebar. . .
Love looks like home improvement, cheerfully done until you became a regular at Lowes. . .
Love looks like saying, "yes, you" every every day. . .
Love looks like the depth and breadth and height of all the life we've woven and built, fashioned and made, not so sure where one ends and the other begins, these ordinary miracles that find us discovering Valentines in chilly November, the blaze of July, any random Tuesday night or early morning Friday,

and tomorrow, too.

Before Lowes and Ikea. . .

2010-02-02T07:50:00.000-05:00

...became our second and third homes, I did a little crafting. Now our bed is in my craft room and you are more likely to step into a frying pan in my living room than into an oasis of calm like this.

But before that, before the inspiration fast led to the big project feast, I tinkered around with some materials I'd had here for a long time. I'll share a few, partly to remind myself that sanity will return and demolition will again give way to dabbling.

I used to be a pretty serious scrapbooker, and while I've given away some of my materials as photography and embroidery took over my hobby time, I still have a good selection of tools and a love for beautiful papers. The three squares of color over my little chair are simply 12x12 pieces of scrapbook paper, decoupaged onto canvas board and antiqued a bit with a black ink pad. I added adhesive hangers to the back and brought in a little color.

As for the wreath hanging on the window frame, it may look familiar. This is one of my favorite recent projects from the blogosphere, my version of Living With Lindsay's book page wreath. This was an easy and nearly free project, but I'd had it bookmarked since November, as more and more ideas pushed it aside. When I finally sat down to do it, it took under an hour.

The window frame itself came from this house, one of several I kept when we had our windows replaced. Before, this corner had four framed photographs and was very vanilla. Every time I really looked at it, I was dissatisfied. Now it has a littel color and life, and I have a few less homeless craft ingredients floating around in my craft room.

Which is nice, since we need a place to sleep.

Of Clarity and Sheetrock Dust

2010-01-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

Something happens when you turn off the taps to all those ideas of what you might be doing, all those tear sheets you're not stuffing in a binder, all those things your not scheming for the time and budget to maybe, someday, do.

You figure out that there are a few things you've been covering up with the "fluff" that could use attention. And you have the mental energy and attention span to figure out what to do with them. Clarity.

First there was the non-working, relatively scary gas fireplace we'd inherited when we moved in four years ago. In a home project that went eerily smoothly, we replaced connections and logs and doors and now we won't freeze in our own home if an ice storm maroons us at the top of this hill we live on.

Intoxicated with momentum and ears and eyes rested from my "inspiration fast," we turned our eyes to the master bath. Though tiny in size, it had a bonus-- it showered in its shower stall, and into the crawlspace too! It had been out of commission for a year. Now it has neither walls nor floor, and rotten flooring and damaged joists will be replaced and in a few weeks, and all will be made well. Seeing the material that came out of the affected area, I was pretty happy that I never suffered a four foot drop right through the floor.

We are happy to turn over most of the gritty bathroom work to a kind, fair and knowledgeable pro, and we are giving some DIY love to the kitchen. It has been an evolving project since we moved in, and with bigger boys and a slowly expiring little oven, we will be reusing and reshaping that space.

When you take a break from idea input, you might end up as I did at first, doing lots of little projects with what you have on hand. I'll be sharing a few of those. But you might also be given a new vision-- seeing the forest instead of all those trees you've been swinging on. For me, the result in the meantime is a lot of physical upheaval but a clarity of focus.

Now, has anyone seen my tape measure?

Today I loved. . .

2010-01-19T14:33:00.001-05:00

this post from Susie. Those little connections we make, tucked in between the to and fro of our days, make us more human, give us glimpses into the worlds of others.

The Roast Chicken Principle

2010-01-14T10:03:00.001-05:00

I've been extremely stuck blog-wise since the new year. (Which makes me think of Winnie the Pooh-- "a wedged bear in a great tightness," which is likely a pretty common post-holiday state of body and spirit.)

However, as sometimes happens, the juices began to flow as I was e-mailing a beloved internet friend, and when she wrote back she suggested I copy my e-mail into a blog post. As I always like to take the advice of wise women, I decided to do just that, because my message is truly where my mind and heart and hands have been.

I am considering the idea of enough in other areas than I have before as well-- I used to think that the more inspiration I had around me, for home, for craft, for cooking, the better. But yesterday I made a list of some little projects I want to do around here-- nothing major, many I have materials for already, and it was enough to keep me busy until spring! I was really convicted about how much time I waste, reading and bookmarking more ideas, new ideas, more more more. So I am going to try to turn off that faucet for a bit, turn my hand to what I’ve already got to do and enjoy, and silence the nagging voice that I might be “missing something.”

I could call it the roast chicken principle. I have a recipe for a roast chicken that I love-- the one from the Mitford cookbook. It has never failed me-- in fact-- I’m making it tonight. It is one of my favorite meals, and we all look forward to it.

And yet, do you know how many roast chicken recipes I have clipped from magazines, bookmarked in Firefox, copied from cookbooks borrowed from the library? As though, out there somewhere, though I love and can almost taste in my imagination the first bite of the roast chicken I have, there is some Nirvana of roast chicken I must discover.

Enough. No more more for the sake of more. I have my roast chicken. Amen.

Like any resolution, carried too far, this principle would go off the rails quickly. I love new ideas, creativity, other ways of looking. Until recently, it just didn’t occur to me that ideas could be over-consumed as much as the peanut butter balls I made at Christmas. I remember you wrote something last year about intentionally stopping imagining remodeling the kitchen, for example. Profound-- the quest for contentment, for acknowledgment of sufficiency begins in head and heart and not at the wallet.

And for once, I took my own good advice. I took my list back to the craft room and out to the tool shed, and it has been a very productive week. Corners of the house have been transformed with no additional money spent, once I realized that all that "inspiration" I kept guzzling daily was perhaps paralyzing me rather than providing grist for the mill.

I'll be sharing my projects in the days to come, and as I mark things off my list, I hope to use some wisdom and pacing as I slowly open up the gates for ideas again, to check myself that I am spending as much time making as I am gathering vision.

New

2010-01-04T10:13:00.000-05:00

Just words today.

I think the first day back at school after Christmas is Mommies New Year's Day. True to form I have exercised and cleaned house.

I am grateful to move into this new year, hopefully a little wiser from the bruises of 2009, yet hopeful for 2010.

Happy New Year.

Immanuel

2009-12-25T09:31:00.001-05:00

The waiting is over. The anticipation reached a crescendo as our pastor blew out the candles on the Advent wreath one by one last night, reminding us that without Jesus at the center, we could not know true hope, peace, joy and love. And then the light of Christ was carried into the sanctuary, and set in the center of that circle of promise. As we shared it from wick to wick, faces were illuminated as we reflected His glory.

God is with us.

Please and Thank You

2009-12-15T15:54:00.000-05:00

So much of this year has been dark. This is not a pity-party. Just fact. Within the cocoon of the four of us, things have been blessedly peaceful, but swirling all around us, illness and strife and trouble and struggle. Born of lung infections and recession and generational un-grace and sin. John and I took a little stock of the last eleven and a half months the other night and agreed we will watch 2009 slip into the past tense without regretting seeing it go.

And yet. At the eleventh hour, at almost the end of the year. In these darkest days with lowering skies, grace comes. Into hands and hearts made helpless, forgiveness and letting go is bringing freedom and peace. Saying, "enough," and reaching to embrace while there is still time. Hands to hold feel better than the cool grip of being right. And with each day, brightness is creeping into my heart.

This isn't a cheap grace that says the past doesn't matter. If anything, the light coming is shining around all our brokenness, illuminating all our cracks, the places we have chipped each other, the wounds we make and sustain. But it is the grace that says, "Nevertheless. Nevertheless, we are on the journey together. I may draw careful boundaries, I may know where your sharp places are and try to avoid them, but we will continue to travel. Let's go."

So many times this year my husband and I have looked around us at others we love and been left wordless and answerless. We were only able to ask Him, the One Who wore our skin, the one by Whose wounds we are healed, "Please." Which is another word for "Help."

We said "Please."
Now we say, "Thank You."

Moving Beyond Guilt

2009-12-05T10:28:00.000-05:00

I'm over at Christmas Change today, talking about moving beyond guilt as a motivation to change our Christmas practices and celebration. Join the conversation. . .

The Best Gifts

2009-12-01T08:53:00.001-05:00

Like the deep humming of a great engine starting up, you feel it before you hear it. Today is the first of December, and the buffer of Thanksgiving, which these days barely slows the onslaught of candy canes and red noses, is but a memory and a sinkful of leftovers containers. It's on, people.

But here is a little secret. This turning I've been writing about, the shift others have been musing on, has a bonus. Yes, we're saying yes to fewer gifts, fewer time commitments, simpler decorations. So thus we say yes, to fewer moments standing in line, less stress, fewer wardrobe concerns. Yes to less hurry. Yes to more cups of hot chocolate with our kids, yes, to another read aloud chapter. Yes to making room for the coming One in our hearts.

One of the things about having the sort of year I've had is that the way we've always done things doesn't work this year. And as we are re-imagining how we can incarnate hope and celebration on the landscape before us, I'm realizing the nature of the best gifts. They're unasked for, unexpected, not so much received as experienced.

the tenderness of a Pop pop making pancakes and bacon with a six year old grandson
a brave nine year old swinging out on a vine, his face pure joy
"Me and Juilo Down By the Schoolyard" coming out of the speakers in the van, bringing non-stop smiles ("I'm on my way./ I don't know where I'm going./I'm on my way./I'm taking my time but I don't know where.")
A shaft of light, making a photograph I don't even need to compose, just click the shutter and whisper a thanks.
Arriving at the in-laws just in time to salvage a solid wood door to replace our very ugliest hollow one.
Four Kemps laughing out loud at old Cosby Show episodes on DVD.
A little brother laying aside a piece of his candy to save for his big brother.
"Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming," sung with gentle yet thrilling grace by a quartet, and singing "I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light" as the first Advent candle at church is lit.

Just a list, a motley patchwork of delight and reverence, glee and grace. Every single day has these moments, moments we cannot plan for, that cannot be bought or wrapped, gifts in the purest sense.

And let's face it, Jesus is the ultimate gift no one could have expected. The prophesies were there, but who could have imagined God clothed in silken baby flesh, the Word made inarticulate, Creator helpless in the arms of an unwed teenager? And yet as we stand at the stable door, as we put down our packages and our busyness and our expectations, the utter perfection of this Gift, sent from the Father, shines.

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:14-16

Wrapped in our skin, with hands that would do work and share bread and lift in prayer, with feet made for dusty roads and the wooden hulls of fishing boats and for nails, He is a double gift: an empathetic Redeemer. He shatters and exceeds our assumptions; He is outrageously more than we try to make Him, because He made Himself less for our sakes.

Even a glimpse inside such a package, and the vision we long for our children to see demands we make room, clear the clutter, claim the time, be willing to be revolutionary by embracing less than we could own, to receive the More that awaits us.

Better Together

2009-11-19T13:57:00.000-05:00

Counter cultural life change is hard. In the midst of turning, nothing can provide more encouragement than someone saying, "You know, we've been thinking about some of the same things, and wondering what changes we could make." Community can breathe life and staying power into our best intentions.

Please come be a part of an interactive online community at Christmas Change. C0ntent is still being added to the site, but there are already challenges and encouragement to spend less and give more, places to share you own story of change, and some special bloggers will begin tomorrow to add their voices.

Coming will be a family page and curriculum, and as each story is added to the site, we can benefit from the richness of shared experience.

As Amber wrote yesterday, shifting our celebration of Christmas is really an admission of reality-- we can only begin to conceive of the glory of the gift we've already received. As we draw close to the Gift Who is also the Giver, we are free to become the open handed people He created us to be.

So come and share your story, and read the stories of others. I'll be writing over there in a couple of weeks. Let us encourage each other, to dwell with joy in the Story this season is telling.

A Woman With a Plan

2009-11-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

As I wrote in A Modest Proposal, a Christmas season more focused on the gift of presence and perhaps a broadened sense of who our neighbor is requires not just stopping. Stopping overfilling the shopping cart, stopping overfilling the calendar, stopping the frenzied rush toward collapse on the 26th. It requires turning. Turning toward a new way, and especially if our homes include small children, paving the pathway well for them.

So about the time the toy catalogs thump into mailboxes, about the time the trees go up at Stuffmart, about the time turkey and cranberries go on sale, we sit down together. Over dessert after a family dinner, we ask our boys what their favorite things are to do during the holiday season. From that first conversation, we set the tone that what is most important about these precious few weeks to come is what we do together during them, not the things we give each other on Christmas morning.

The conversation ranges all over, from riding around to look at Christmas lights to when we're going to Poppop and Grandma's to watching Charlie Brown, to baking for neighbors and Christmas Eve service. We contribute ideas too, and before long we have an embarassment of riches in planned outings and evenings in together, and most of them free or nearly so.

Now, the boys are still pretty excited about those plump toy catalogs, and their heads can often be seen in early November, close together over a page of LEGO sets, Sharpies in hands. And we enjoy those shiny pages for a few days, and then recycle them. Just as I find that hanging out at Pottery Barn isn't good for my contentment level, weeks of ads for thousands of toys would make any Christmas morning look paltry to a child's eyes. Our boys almost never see television with commercials, and this serves us very well the last two months of the year. As we curb other media sources, I'm exposing them to sites like Advent Conspiracy, and we're talking about the service projects popping up at their schools and at church.

There is one place I'll be spending a little more. From past years' experience, I've learned that avoiding the Stuffmart is a really good idea for me from Thanksgiving to New Years. It is far better for me to pay slightly more for our food at the grocery store and skip the crowds and temptations "where Christmas costs less." (Ugh) So I'll be planning meals and clipping my coupons. By avoiding the big box stores, I avoid those impulse endcap purchases, that nagging sense that whatever I've purchased or made isn't "enough." The Wall Street Journal says retailers spent $17.2 billion on holiday advertising last year. Why put myself in a position to pit my willpower against that kind of funded message?

Of course, this is all the planning that the kids can see. Behind the scenes, we've set our budget, placed orders for the toys we will be buying, and gathered materials for handmade presents. But it isn't too late to begin those things now.

To recap:
A Plan of Turning

includes the whole family, and emphasizes shared experiences over purchased gifts.

sets kids up for contentment and gratitude by limiting exposure to advertising and gradually exposing them to empowering information about giving to the least of these, appropriate to their ages

is honest about temptations and stresses and creatively plans to reduce their influence

reinforces budget and spending plans already in place, or makes those first, thus limiting financial worries and beginning planning with an honest picture of what is possible for spending and giving

With a clear vision of how this year can be different, and the recognition that intention in the little things is what makes that vision reality, the turning can begin today.

A Modest Proposal

2009-11-13T08:42:00.000-05:00

Thursday night is our one TV night, and as we settled in with our popcorn bowl last night, it was already everywhere. One lone commercial mentioned Thanksgiving, but the rest had coasted right along to jingling bells, red and green, and promises that "it's like getting paid to shop."

Sheesh.

Last year I discovered this movement and found at last articulated and artfully presented the nagging disappointment and revolutionary possibility of the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day I've sensed for years.

Because of limited budget and home size and knowing deep down that "Christmas doesn't come from a store," we've never pursued making every material dream come true on December 25th. But what I'm realizing more and more, in many aspects of life, is that it is not enough to simply abstain. Tonia and others are inspiring me that is is possible, it is needful, to move with purpose in a different direction.

I'm all about practical application, so here's what we're doing this year, and perhaps some ideas to consider. We are continuing our practice of Advent, using a pottery Advent wreath we've had since our first married Christmas, and this book, purchased when the boys were tiny. This helps remind us that we are expectantly awaiting the birth of our Savior. But of course, no book needs to be purchased, and an Advent wreath can be made with five candles in holders and a bit of free greenery snipped from the yard. We're trying to adjust our heart focus, not trade "secular stuff" for "Christian stuff."

We will still exchange presents, and Santa still visits our home, but we are scaling back even further, and thinking more carefully about meaning and usefulness and remembering and evaluating the inevitable dud gifts from years past. We will be donating the money we aren't spending on each other to a cause we choose as a family. More restrained gift giving also opens up money in the budget to participate in seasonal giving opportunities, like Angel Tree and restocking our local food pantries. We're involving the boys in all these decisions to convey that our decision to worship and give instead of consume is a lifestyle shift we want to make, not merely a guilty impulse. And letting them know as we plan our Decemebr that the real treasure for us is the time we'll spend together.

So that is the home front. To celebrate beyond our little family, we are making many gifts for others. We're planning days of cooking and baking to express our appreciation to bus drivers, teachers, neighbors. We're opening our home to others, rather than going out or buying that prewrapped forgettable impersonal thing on the endcap at the Stuff-mart.

So here's my idea. You know those gift exchanges? The bunco group, the Bible study girls, the coworkers, the scrapbookers? The gatherings where we go out to lunch and exchange a dizzying number of candles and bottles of bath oil? I love candles and bath oil, but perhaps this year when names are drawn, each person could designate a favorite charity. And the giver could then take the dollars she would have spent on that trinket, and reach out in honor of the recipient, to clothe, feed, nourish the needy. Or the group could choose one relief organization for a multiplied blessing.

Still gather for that meal, still celebrate being with each other. But maybe, instead of a lunch out, gather for a pot luck and bring items for your local food pantry's wish list. Take the time you would have spent in traffic and standing in line to buy that gift, and write your friend or coworker a card about how much she means to you. Have a cup of coffee togther and lean in close, taking a picture with your cell phone. Accept that the greatest present we can give each other is our genuine presence.

I love to give gifts. I'm just feeling a need to transform and broaden my definition of what it is to give. To trust that the ones I love will be receptive to doing things differently than we've always done them. I know real encounter with the relentless Redeemer cannot be swaddled in tissue paper. This Christmas I want to live what I know is true.

This Girl's Guide to Gratitude

2009-11-03T16:15:00.001-05:00

I have a date with my heating pad tonight. This is my last hurrah at the computer for the day, after a long morning of culling, editing and uploading pictures. This is a big time of year for this shutterbug, and my shoulders and back are no fans of photoshop.

There is an advantage to spending a few hours filling my eyes with the faces and places that have been filling my days. Despite the difficult parts of this year, the tears and questions and wrestlings and griefs, clearly, irrefutably, my life is crowded with blessing, strewn with wonder. Laughter and play and hope and smiles and goofiness brush shoulders with beauty and grace and peace and homemade joys. Bread has risen in the kitchen while the mornings have acquired that particular bright blue snapping air, leaves have turned and boys have grown and outgrown clothes and shoes and even our wildest dreams. I'm rubbing eyes tired from the screen, but dazzled and dazed with my riches, my wealth unearned, unpurchased.

Becuase here's the thing. Because these days have been mine to live and not just document, I know the truth of the matter. Despite all these images I hold up, the Halloween costimes and first days of school, garden blooms and family hikes, they are surrounded by millions more moments lived and not recorded. Like light breaking around the edges of a hand held up to the sun, their glory blooms beyond what I could capture. Though they've stopped me in my tracks with gratitude, my pictures are just crumbs from the banquet I have a seat at every day.

So through whatever medium you use, look at your life. Listen, ear to the ground.

Rustics ReBorn Reborn

2009-10-02T08:18:00.000-04:00

I was so happy to learn this morning that our friend Doug is back at work, salvaging old hardware and barn wood to create his wonderful coat racks. He's been on hiatus for several months as he and his wife Rachel welcomed their third son, but his etsy shop is stocked again.

We have known Doug and Rachel for years, celebrated with them at their wedding, and rejoiced with them at each addition to their family. So the coat rack Doug created and gave us as a gift is a treasured piece in our home. It is equally happy holding sun hats and dried lavender, or pinecones and winter coats and hats.

Doug's inventiveness is best expressed in the objects he uses for the hooks themselves. There are old coathooks, to be sure, but also aged doorknobs and casters. Weathered brass, black metal and porcelain and cut glass doorknobs are set off against the weathered grays and browns of the barnwood. I see one even features a candle sconce.

If you're unpacking your jackets for cooler weather and would like to combine utility and art in your home or want a one of a kind gift for a loved one who appreciates pieces of the past and recycling in its purest form, pay a visit to Rustics ReBorn.

Plenty

2009-09-29T17:24:00.000-04:00

It happened Friday night as we slept. Friday had been hot and sunny. Oppressive, even. But while we were sleeping, autumn swept in. Rain and mist, and a chill in the air.

These first days of a new season are a blend of pulse-quickening joy and slight melancholy. A balance of lasts and firsts. The blossoms of summer are clinging to a few stems, but most petals are ragged. The garden has that crumby, wild-eyed look of an over-tired preschooler who badly needs to be tucked into bed. The chimes strung from the eaves no longer hang in a humid stillness, but sing to me as the breeze cools at the end of the day.

Many bloggers have been writing about the move inward, making space for living more inside, and I'm doing it too, even as we savor some of the most glorious weeks given to someone living in the upper South Carolina foothills. I'm preparing, cleaning, reordering bookshelves and drawers, washing all the blankets and hanging them to dance in the brisk wind and be warmed in the midday sun. I'm stocking the cabinets with baking supplies, even as I roast the last tomatoes we'll get from my in-laws' amazing garden, blending them with basil and olive oil, parmesan and cracked pepper-- a bit of summer to tuck in between pizza crust and cheese some frosty family movie night.

I was sleeping in the moment Autumn came, but this year, when I am awake, I want to be really awake, soaking in every golden moment as it passes.

"September fattens on vines.
Roses flake from the wall.
The smoke of harmless fires drifts to my eyes.
This is plenty. This is more than enough."
- Geoffrey Hill, September Song

Autumnal

2009-09-22T18:36:00.000-04:00

There is nothing like hearing that you've already been joining in a party and didn't even know it! The delightful Songbirdtiff is hosting a Frugal Fall Decor party, and I've been busy over the last week, "shopping my house, " as Nester says. It is hard to say which is more crowded over the next few weeks, our calendar brimful of good things, or the deductions we're writing in our check register!

I love fall. It is my very favorite season, and I love decorating our home with all its colors, textures and scents. But this year that needed to happen without a trip to Michaels. I bought a huge bunch of bittersweet branches at the farmer's market for $6, and other than that, I've been reusing past decorations and natural elements.

Here's what I've been up to:
1. I took an antique silver tray given by John's late grandmother and added a huge pinecone in the center. I arranged a set of four footed glass bowls from Goodwill on top and filled each of them with some decoartive pods and petals from a bag of potpourrri I'd saved. I love the thick old hotel glass juxtaposed with the dried elements and the intricate carved silver.
2. I hung an amber glass tree ornament in the center of a faux berry wreath in the entryway. It hangs over a barwood shelf and coatrack, given by a friend, so there is again the smooth and shiny with the rough and earthy.
3. Thanks to my sweet mother in law, I have several amber glass and golden pottery pieces. On our mantel a pottery charger plate on a stand is fronted by this pedistal candty dish, filled with more of the potpourri.
4. This amber glass pumpkin is also in the family room on top of a bookcase. Pumpkins are such a happy shape-- I also have a grapevine one and and cream matte ceramic one with a silver stem.
5. I replaced the silk gardenia blossoms I'd alternated with candles on this holder with faux russet pears and small pinecones.

I'm really happy that there is a little touch of autumn in every room in the house. Generally, I went around and tried to replace the cool, light and airy with the warm, textural and earthy. The birdcage on our mantel was emptied of starfish and shells and decoated with a wire strand of berries. Candle holders have been filled with coffee beans and inexpensive pillar candles kept from last year. I don't think I could be happier or our home could feel cozier with lots of purchased things.

I'm looking forward to heading over to Songbirdtiff's and gathering more frugal fall decor ideas. See you there!

Open House

2009-09-17T11:10:00.001-04:00

We've had a couple of big family nights out this week: back to back open houses at the boys' schools. We are a pretty "in to stay by supper," slow paced family, so we're all feeling Thursday in our bones and steps and the corners of our sleepy eyes.

But I love Open House. The year is rolling-- almost an eighth of it has zipped on by, and this is our first in-person glimpse into the little worlds our kids inhabit for so many weekday hours. The shiny plans of Back to School night have been tested and worn a bit. Personalities are figuring out how to fit. Desk and cubby and teacher's face are familiar landings. And as we come in, listen and observe, we can color in some of the sketches outlined by homework and weekly folders and sparse snacktime stories at home. We peer at bulletin boards with "get to know me" projects, we chuckle at the details a child shares, we meet wide-eyed little friends.

Something more happens at Open House. Seated in those little chairs, our knees close to our chins, we look up at our kids' teachers and silently ask, "Do you know what it is to me to share him with you? Do you really SEE him? Does he reveal himself to you, or are you still trying keys at the lock?" And with jealousy and hope intermingled, "What will you discover in him that I might be too close to see?"

We've been so blessed. Our eyes have been met by frank and friendly gazes, enthusiasm and confidence. Our children have been fed encouragement and humor and grace. The women and men who have shared their schooldays have seen themselves as part of a journey in our boys' lives, helpers and guides.

So as I've sent them out the door this week, the pictures in my head of their hours at school are a little clearer, and the faces and hearts of those who lead them a bit more in focus. We're well into the dance of this year, sending and receiving these little people, sending them back and forth between pairs of caring hands.

New Leaf Wrap Up: Knowing When to Turn

2009-09-14T11:32:00.000-04:00

Thanks for your patience as this little series dribbles to an end. :-) I've been testing my theories in the trenches of a bad cold that made its way through the family on top of the glorious messiness of everyday life, and overall, the new leaves have held up well. We've paused instead of hurrying to the next thing, menus planned have saved dollars in the grocery store and at the drive thru window, the house is fairly clean despite sickness and a bit of neglect since I'd finally gotten it clean, and I've tried to work on receiving and extending grace, even to myself. I've not been doing many new things, but there's a bundle of bittersweet and a grapevine wreath waiting for me.

Fall is a natural season for me to look at the way I do things, to implement new plans and tweak old ways. There's a quickening in me, an increased sense of possibility, the sense of something new. For others, this time may come at new year's or around their birthday.

And I think it is healthy, this throwing open of windows and blowing off the dust. Like the parent who finds that the spare clothes packed in the bottom of the diaper bag are three sizes smaller than what the baby wears now, life creeps up on us. The way we care for our homes, the way we seek to answer the needs of our families, changes and shifts over time, since at their center, our plans and schemes involve changing, growing people.

So I encourage you to do that-- especially if there are areas that nag at you-- habits your family has outgrown, parts of the home or the schedule that aren't working for you as hard as they could. At the end of the day, it is all about living as deeply as we can in each day we're given. It makes sense that some things might need to be made efficient, and others slowed down or eliminated.

But here's the other side-- if areas work for you, let them keep working for you. If you're a successful once a month cook, with a plan and a buddy to enact it with and a binder of family-pleasing recipes, keep doing it! If you are a champion zone-cleaner with a sparkly house, clean those rooms top to bottom! Sometimes the restlessness, the next-new-thing obsession of our culture can even creep into how we set the rhythms of our lives. If we are convinced that the next new idea is always just beyond us, and with it a home and family life that will work well, we will never settle into the actual living.

Maybe the best wisdom in all this is in knowing which leaves need turning, and which to leave alone. You know best your own sweet spot, when your focus can go where your heart pulls it.

Blessings to you as you listen to your life.

Nine Eleven

2009-09-11T08:42:00.001-04:00

There is nothing like having children to help you observe the passage of time.

Eight years ago I was holding my ten month old boy in my arms, watching we knew not what unfold on the television screen, and thinking one clear thought, over and over,

"As far as he knows, he will never live in a country where this has not happened."

It felt then as if time was split forever into before this, and after. The chatter and noise of the tenth of September, and the awfully beautiful blue empty skies of the eleventh.

It seems impossible that baby headed off to his third grade class this morning, joined by his little brother. Impossible that so many Septembers have come and gone.

I'll be back next week with some final new leaf thinking, but for this day, overcast and dim here, candles and quiet seem right.

New Leaf #5: Do a New Thing (subtitled: Paint Something Red)

2009-09-04T13:41:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the long gap in the series. Turns out that New Leaf #4.5 was practicing what I preach. This week has been a flurry of time with my boys, homework supervision, planning, cooking and cleaning up after meals, and giving the house its weekly love. The steady round of our routines, tweaked a bit this year to good results.

But today's leaf is about doing something non-repeating, doing something new. I learned the wisdom of this as a young mother, from another young mother. I had a dear friend who gave birth to triplets ten days before my elder son was born. We spent a lot of time with that family that winter, when we were all well. My friend amazed me. Though her life was a whirlwind of bottles, diapers, monitors, she undertook big projects in the little windows of time she carved out. She organized her pantry, she redecorated her master bath. One day when I expressed my wonder, she explained that those things, the tasks that were completed, kept her sane. In the seemingly endless round of repetition, she experienced great satisfaction in doing something once, well, that stayed done.

No matter how committed we are to finding the extraordinary, beautiful, even the holy in the everyday, there is something about the repeating rhythms of home management that can bring us down. Then it is time to carve out an hour to do a new thing, and something that won't need to be redone, rebaked, rewashed. This week, around the spaghetti sauce and spelling words and socks, I've been freshening up our bedroom, painting a couple of small pieces of furniture. Framing some photographs and moving our artwork around.

I don't know what your thing is. Making a piece of artwork, painting a room, sewing a new dress for yourself, planting a fall garden, writing a poem, making something there that wasn't there before. Made in the Creator's image, we are all creators.

In the midst of finding better ways to do the old things that must be done, let's do them with energy and joy. But let us also find an hour or a day to do what may be done. Let's paint something red.

New Leaf #4: Surrender, and er, Never Surrender

2009-08-31T11:46:00.000-04:00

It is true that our family is intentionally doing some new things to ease the transition into the school year.We're making the most of the little gap between bus drop off and carpool homecoming. We're thinking about what we are going to eat, and buying it, and preparing for it, ahead of time. We're cleaning the house, well, mostly I'm cleaning the house, in a way that makes it easier for us all to maintain it throughout the week. And for me, there is nothing like a day with a plan and a new thing to do.

But today's leaf is about grace, the grace to know when we cannot do everything we would like to do, again the embarrassment of a life more full of good things than the hours can hold well. It is about the surrender of knowing what a day can comfortably contain.

I love my read aloud time with my boys. It cannot be rushed, it cannot be hurried, and we like it best when we can read a whole chapter without a pause, except for a refreshed drink or a move from emptied dinner table to soft sofa. And we cannot seem to find the time for it on school nights yet.

There's snack and homework. There's outside, fresh air, no more pencils, no more books. . . time. A certain number of Nerf darts must be fired at each other, usually in the kitchen at the moment when I am taking a smoking hot dinner out of the oven. LEGO creations must be made and taken apart and remade. Lunches must be made for the next day, backpacks readied, baths and daddy time. And now I have two boys who guard there own independent, book self-chosen, private reading moments. There are only so many ways four and a half hours or so can be parsed.

And as for my dear husband and me, last week, before the weekend came and we could get caught up on sleep, each night we started the same conversation, after boys' bedtime "Why are we so tired. . . ?" And there were mutual apologies for being poor company.

This is the point when I would usually imagine a melodramatic scenario in which our family lapses into a chaos of illiteracy and disconnection. You know, by Halloween.

But then, ah, the weekend. We were rested, full of good sleep. Despite John's work commitment, the overall pace felt leisurely. Together the boys and I shared at least four chapters aloud of Then There Were Five. Together we gathered groceries for the coming week, together we worshiped. There was kickball. Homemade pizza. There was balance, regained equilibrium. And as the sun came down on Saturday, there was a stolen half hour with my sweet husband, a slice or two of country bread and a glass of red wine.

And I knew it, that these times of connection and shared words and silences and ease are always woven into our family's life. These good pursuits were not abandoned during the weekdays, but set aside for when they could be enjoyed deeply, lived richly and wide awake.

So moving into the new week, with a drizzly Monday, I'm looking at my hands. I'm thinking of all the things they can do to move this little tribe smoothly through these busy days of study and family. All the good intended things they can release when a day is full, satisfied. All those things they can take up again when there is space and light and an hour to hold them well.

New Leaf #3: Work Smarter

2009-08-28T11:09:00.000-04:00

I have to warn you, yesterday's scintillating post on menu planning was downright glamorous compared to today's new leaf, concerning cleaning the house.

I'll warm you to the topic with a confession: I am not a great house cleaner.

Some who've been in my abode or who have seen carefully framed pictures of my space might dispute, but it is true. The thing is, I like orderliness and don't like clutter, so my house often looks much cleaner than it is. But as far as dealing with the real dirt and dust and fingerprints, I've never found a system that works for me.

Not unlike my menu planning dilemma, when I put lots of energy into weeks worth of dinners only to pour bowl after bowl of cereal for breakfast and be stumped at snacktime, I've always felt like I'm forever doing cleaning tasks yet the house is never really clean.

You know, that walk in the door, look at the shiny, everything smells good kind of clean.

And then I read this article in a recent Woman's Day magazine, and my list-loving self decided to try again. In a nutshell, the article suggests that zone cleaning-- cleaning a whole room or area entirely before moving on to the next, is not very efficient. Ms. Cohen instead recommends moving through the whole house doing the same cleaning task, such as dusting or cleaning mirrors, in every room, before moving onto the next job. You finish with floors, and vacuum your way out of the house.

I tried it last Friday, and though it was hard work, and I was dealing with some scary accumulation, I was really pleased with the results. The best part was how easy it was to maintain during the week. Now it is late Friday morning again, and I've finished my cleaning routine. The house looks kind of festive, the sort of clean and tidy that is usually reserved for before a party. But its just us this weekend, and I'll light some candles at dinner.

Blessings for a good weekend!

New Leaf #2: The Feeding of the Four Kemps

2009-08-27T09:06:00.000-04:00

I'm writing for the next little while about the adjustments we're making to our family life as the school year begins. It's early yet, but we seem to be blessed with a pretty smooth transition and I think some of the things we're doing, not doing, and doing differently are helping us along.

Today, I'm talking about a tool you can read about all over the place. Mommycoddle's written about it. Simple Mom's written about it. You can use your freezer to do it. It is menu planning. Sitting down with a calendar or list, cookbooks and torn-out recipes, grocery ads and coupons, and thinking through what your family will eat ahead of time.

I should confess from the outset that I am a menu-planning dropout many times over. There is nothing I love better than systems or lists, and yet, over and over, I fall off the planning wagon.

It isn't as though I'm not a true believer. Menu planning avoids the dreaded "five o'clock shuffle" into the kitchen, the standing with a blank look in front of cupboard or freezer, the journey that leads too often to the drive through window because it happens at the most chaotic hour of the day. Menu planning saves money, not only on meals out but in the grocery store, eliminating emergency trips and making the most of specials. It avoids food waste. And a little advanced thinking factors in some new recipes to the rotation.

So as I turn over this new leaf, I'm trying to think through what I've tried in the past. The key to any good system is finding out what works for you, what you are really going to continue doing over the long haul, when idealism meets science fair projects, flu season and the February doldrums. I think I've started to figure out some mistakes I've made before and how I can do things differently. Maybe this will be helpful to you too.

--Look ahead, but not too far. Before, I've tried two or even four week blocks of planning time. I get overwhelmed easily, both in coming up with meals and making the shopping list for them. A week is just right for me. I'm using a printable from Organized Home that has a week's worth of blocks for breakfast, lunch and dinner. (OH's server appears to be down this morning, but when it is up and running, it is a great resource for all kinds of home organization ideas.)
--They really do want to eat three times a day, and have snacks, too! I've focused too much in previous plans only on dinner, and then become frustrated that despite all my planning, there was still a lot of on-the-fly figuring out for breakfast and lunch. For us and our lunchbox kids, there's a lot of repitition and leftovers for these meals, but they still need to be part of the plan.
--Glance over the week as a whole and ask how you can help yourself. I had a lighter day on my schedule, so the roasted tomato pizza sauce for the weekend was made the other morning. Muffins get mixed up the night before. One big batch of dough can provide breadsticks for tonight and crust for later. I especially try to lighten the hands-on load for weekend meals so I can be with my family and not necessarily in the kitchen.
--Don't reinvent the wheel. If Pizza Friday Night feels like an end of week celebration, go with it. Every week or two we have breakfast for dinner. Oddly, I find that when a few nights a week are taken up by these standbys, I have more energy to try new recipes.

It's working for me. In a few minutes I'll go into the kitchen and do the chopping and marinating for fajitas tonight, leaving me free mid-afternoon for shady waiting with Sam and available for homework help and reading aloud.

Now, on a note of honesty. Despite all the above merits and tricks and shortcuts, this is still not my favorite homemaking task. If nothing else works as I drag myself to my notebook and recipe folder, I spend a few minutes thinking about the ridiculous luxury it is to have to figure out what to eat, to have at my fingertips a dazzling array of meat and vegetables, fruits and carbohydrates, spcies and sauces, to combine to feed my family. I don't weep because I wonder what I'll feed my family tomorrow, because it is always a question of which. And I ask the Giver for a heart made grateful.

New Leaves #1: Shady Waiting

2009-08-26T14:08:00.000-04:00

In these first weeks of the school year, we're finding our way to some new routines and rhythms, adjusting to a tweaked schedule, and finding those places to continue to connect to each other now that the ease of the pajama mornings and long lazy afternoons and later bedtimes of summer have gone. I thought I'd spend the next few posts writing about these "new leaves" we're turning over.

I collect my younger son from the bus stop a little while before our car pool delivers my older son to our driveway. Last week, inspired by a cool breeze and the deep shade of our pecan trees, I dragged a couple of chairs over and Sam and I sipped from icy water bottles and visited while we waited for Joshua. I found out more about Sam's school day in that few minutes side by side than entire weeks from last year. I heard his great sense of humor, found out what books he's selecting independently at school, and heard about new friends.

I was so thankful that I'd not hurried inside, hitched the snack-and-homework car to the train that's been running since sunrise, gone on to the next thing. We paused.

After a few minutes of chatting, he was more than ready for brother to get home, for LEGOS and a glass of milk and all those next things. But we'd had our moment, and decided to make it a date. Every pretty day, we'll spend that window of time in the shade together, out of the shadow of the big brother, off the clock.

No Wheels

2009-08-20T10:58:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I still feel like a little kid.

Not in a lollipop licking, carefree kind of way, but in the grounded kind of way, the look out the window until your ride comes, if your ride comes, not controlling much about where you are kind of way.

I'm parked in front of this big monitor, with the font size cranked up and peering through the bottom half of my bifocals. I'll not be seeing the world through these mostly broken eyes from behind the wheel of a car. Never have, likely won't. For your safety and mine, and in accordance with the laws of my state. Amen.

Most of the time I'm good with it. I have a truly adoring husband who takes me wherever I want to go, friends who offer kindly, errands worked out and home organized for a mom who is short on transportation but long on planning and lists. I never go without doing or getting anything that needs doing or getting. Even here in the south, where our idea of public transit is nearly non-existent.

But sometimes, sometimes, I feel a little less of an adult. There's something about that autonomy of picking up a jingling set of keys and heading out, for where you want, as long as you want, even spontaneously with no definite plan. There are days when that sounds so good to me. And sometimes those feelings spill over into feeling like a burden on those who take me places or make my car-less life possible.

Of course, my parents felt the burden of my reduced vision and made sure I did too. Long before even a perfectly-sighted child could have ferried themselves around, I knew better than to ask for extra lessons or after school activities that would have added weight to just having me around. Until I was an adult I could not understand that I that I was made to feel ashamed for my low vision from kindergarten on. Lessons you grow up breathing are hard to unlearn.

One of my boys is going to a commuter school this year, where he joins with kids from across the county, and everyone carpools. And again, as John takes up the role of carpool dad, I'm self-conscious that all I can offer is a smile and a wave. And despite my gratitude for the moms bringing kids home, for the bus that delivers my younger son to me, for my husband's cheerful spirit, for the colors and shapes and words and images I can enjoy, something like that old shame and embarrassment and frustration wells up.

How I wish those closest to me had extended some grace to that little blond girl I was, with the thick thick glasses. Grace to explain a double recessive trait, and how genes combined without cause or blame to twist my optic nerves. Grace to assure of faithful, patient help and to emphasize all that little girl could do. Grace that love is not earned by perfection, but given for free.

So maybe now its my turn, to learn how to graciously accept help with hands that are open. To lift off that shame and leave it aside, knowing no one assigns it to me now.

I'm thankful my sons have not inherited my vision, and in their physical sight the world is crystal clear. But every child asks the question of his or her family, "Am I ok in the world? Do I bring joy? Am I good enough? Do you smile on me?"

And thankfully I can see my way clear to celebrate my children with the yeses of word and deed, caress and laughter.

And that little blond girl inside, with her Coke bottle glasses, can smile too. She's ok in the world, bringing joy, good enough, smiled upon.

First Day

2009-08-19T11:38:00.000-04:00

Here I am again.

I remember the quality of the quiet of the house on the first day of school. It is a waiting quiet, a quiet that is busy, maybe, but away beneath it, there's the awareness that later, tennis shoes will scuttle in the mudroom, backpacks will land on the breakfast room floor, and the most real part of the day will be shared over glasses of milk. Out will come the lunchboxes with their crusts and crumbs, out will come the sheaves of paperwork and permission slips, and if I am very lucky, out will come a few words about teachers and new friends and stories heard and playground fun.

The rest I am left to imagine, a quilt I am making all year, piecing together the scraps I collect from their imagined lives during the day, away from me. Always I'll be holding it up to the light, hoping to read in the pattern contentment and growth and learning. Knowing all the time that we add the most important parts, the batting and backing to warm and give shape and dimension, the stitches that unify the colors and textures and the binding that creates the frame for where they've been, where they're going.

Against the odds of the last couple of months, today I'm feeling so peaceful and blessed and grateful. A schoolgirl myself at heart, new year's is at the end of the summer, and I think it is going to be a very good year.

To Begin Better

2009-08-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the first day of school. This time last year I was undone. My little bird was going to kindergarten, the one I'd kept with me full time until last August. My elder boy, impossibly cloaking the baby I'd held just yesterday, marched into second grade. We had a rough transition, a bumpy landing that went on and on.

This year, thankfully, feels different. Though our little band is surrounded by issues and hurts larger than we are, we seem to be holding steady. A little breeze of excitement and optimism whispers through our preparations.

Admittedly, I am eager to release the last weeks of this painful summer to take up a new season. But there is something else here. I'm imagining the hours of quiet I'll have, a return to an exercise schedule that give me both energy and restful sleep. Moments to plan and to consider. And coupled with these visions for myself, I see my boys. They're a year older, and while I mourn the flying months, I can't help but appreciate their increased confidence, the poise and skill they add on to every day, and the celebrate the new adventure that awaits them.

I can't promise no tears tomorrow. But I'll be smiling through them if they fall.

"Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."
Truvy, from Steel Magnolias

Growing and Making and Being Made

2009-08-12T11:27:00.000-04:00

This morning we engaged in one of our bi-annual traditions, "Try-On Day." In late winter and at the end of the summer, we pull out all the next season's clothes and see what fits, what goes from big brother to little brother, and what will be boxed up to bless another family with a trio of boys smaller than ours.

Now, to be clear, we live in the South, honey! My kiddos will be wearing summer clothes for the first quarter of the school year, but we were pulling out the denim and the long sleeves, so I can get a preview of what we'll need, and spread out the spending to cover the wrist and ankle bones that kept popping out of sleeves and hems.

Though we're all tired by the end of this marathon, I have lots of reasons to smile on Try On Day. I'm so thankful to have little guys who are cheerfully willing to pull on shirt after shirt and many pairs of jeans, let me look critically at jacket cuffs and adjustable waists. And then, there's always the excitement of a big brother who knows he'll get to choose a new jacket, while a little brother rejoices that a long-coveted shirt will come to him. I'm always amazed at how much we have, thanks to clearance racks and thrift stores and generous friends. And thankful that usually our list amounts to shoes, new socks, and filling in some gaps.

I'm in a try on season myself now. My view of who God could be is straining at the buttons. Some old patterns of thinking, inherited from the brokenness of generations, are feeling the cool breeze on their ankles. Time for them to go. Too small, the wrong shape, needing remaking and reshaping. Perhaps stepping into a sense of what I'm being made into, and its feeling good. Roomy, but not baggy. Tailored.

In good hands.

Encouraged

2009-08-10T08:29:00.001-04:00

Inspired by a brand new site, debuting today at (In) Courage, I'm considering encouragement.

I'd rather not.

This has been a heavy, heartbreaking summer. Relationships torn, new hurts layered over old wounds, too often the feeling that despite the gift God has given of my own beautiful family, I am orphaned at heart.

So if I consider encouragement, many mornings the best I can come up with is that I'm still here. I'm reading aloud, I'm proofing yeast, I'm taking a few pictures, I'm buying school supplies and hanging laundry, hugging boys and holding my husband's hand. God keeps giving a new day, every twenty-four hours, and the mercy and grace for me to step into it. And He'll keep doing it, beckoning that dawn over the hills and opening my eyelids to that first hazy light, until He takes me home.

He's my Father, my first and perfect parent. He's beside me when the tears fall, and He laughs with me when laughter, rare lately, bubbles up. And He will keep on, with His relentless love, calling me back to the life He's given me, tipping the scales for joy.

"May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word."
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

A Simple Woman's Daybook

2009-07-06T09:33:00.001-04:00

I have seen this lovely prompt from Peggy, who also blogs at The Simple Woman, all over the net, but have never done it here at Daily Portion. Peggy asks, "Are you content to linger on the simple things of life...then join me in taking a little look into the day plans and thoughts of those of us who are focusing on simplicity...the beauty of the everyday moments around us."

This is a woman after my own heart!

So, here we go:

FOR TODAY, July 6th, 2009...
Outside my window...the sun is shining, the air already heavy with humidity.
I am thinking...of my dear friend Rachel, returning home with her family from China later this week.
I am thankful for... my home, my cheerful, open-hearted boys, my loving husband who makes my eyes light up.

From the kitchen...there will be steak fajitas later, with peppers from our garden.
I am wearing...workout clothes. I have at date with Leslie Sansone at some point today.
I am creating...a surprise for my mother-in-law, that will make her smile.
I am going...no farther than the mailbox today. :-)
I am reading...Masterpiece aloud to the boys, saving the latest Lisa Samson for upcoming vacation for me. I've had a bad run at the library lately.
I am hoping...to keep things in balance this week-- to keep the relaxed pace of summer intact in the midst of preparation and planning.
I am hearing...the shouts of happy boys outside in a Nerf dart gun battle, something about spies behind enemy lines. . .
Around the house...there are LEGOS and laundry all over. So, the usual. . .
One of my favorite things...is a second cup of coffee mid-morning, feels like a treat.
A few plans for the rest of the week: include preparing for some time away, capturing the latest blooms in the garden with the camera, and celebrating my sister's birthday.

It is amazing how full even a simple life is when considered with all our senses. Wishing you a lovely day!

Candles for Spaghetti Night

2009-07-02T13:47:00.000-04:00

Or, for an alternate title, how my hands help my heart.

I've been noticing lately, in this summer of soul-searching and emotional sifting, of trying to swim for a rocky shore instead of just riding the swells helplessly, is how the physical act can calm the spirit. I can do something that is just part of my day, taking care of my family, and find that the motion of hanging laundry, kneading dough, pushing the needle in and out or taking a room from disordered to tidy makes a space, even in the midst of troubled thoughts, for calm to creep in. This is not new-- the gift of routine and the comfort of ritual.

But just to take it a step further, I notice than when I move beyond the necessary into the celebratory, beyond what merely must be done into imagining what may be done, made, created, relished, that is when I feel not only a bit better, but as though my life is given back to me, that beneath the questions, hurts and worries, "YES" is being said, deep and sweet.

So, because it makes my Sam light up, we have spaghetti night by candleglow. I wash the sheets, then spray them with lavender. I sit down with ice water and my journal in the afternoon and sink into the midst of words, my old friends. I lift my voice in praise after a sleepless night. I look deep into my boys' eyes when we talk together, and I hug my husband an extra time or two. I'm taking more pictures than I have for a couple of years, and as I try to continue to learn, I find I am more patient with myself. And with each act of the body, each stretch of the mind, my heart is strengthened. I see again the wisdom of doing the next good thing.

So today, I wish you the next good thing to do. If your heart is happy, let that happiness flow into your hands for a good deed. If your spirit is troubled, know that God may transmit His healing through the work of your own fingers.

"I raise my hands to frame the light
I raise my voice in the middle of the night
I close my eyes when I start to sing
It’s a way of, way of praying
In the silence you surround my soul
In the laughter you can make me whole
I hold it all like some promise made
It’s a way of, way of praying"
Carrie Newcomer "The Yes of Yes"

By the way, I have added a link to my Flickr photostream to the sidebar, in case you want to see more images from my daily portion.

The Art of Listening

2009-07-01T14:21:00.000-04:00

Quiet here-- living large emotionally, spiritually, loving on some loved ones who are struggling, letting go of other stuff. Living quiet here at home, watercolors, laundry, swim lessons for boys, popcorn and beer with John at the end of the day. Goodwill jaunts, library bags with handles stretched and straining, sweet corn in the steamer and tomatoes ripening on the sill. Some mornings, an open journal, others, just music and the sun slanting into the breakfast room.

I am posting messages to the blog of a friend who is in China with her family, adopting their daughter. Having a front row seat to watch this joy and challenge unfolding, a three-year prayer and dream and roller coaster ride, is having a profound effect on me. I want to sit quietly with it, as with our friends we cling to what God has promised. As they are stretched beyond what they ever could have imagined possible. As they welcome this new little loved one into their midst. I'm so blessed to be listening to their journey this summer.

Lighter

2009-06-22T11:05:00.000-04:00

This blog can sometimes be a little much, I know. Though the name has changed, my "daily portion" is still made up of "everyday graces," an ongoing litany of the joys of laundry blowing on the line, kids' artwork, good books, hot coffee, and all the ordinary extraordinary things that fill my little life.

But every day of counted blessings is a journey of healing to me. From a childhood lived in a family where the air was heavy with resentment, anger, suspicion and, to borrow Philip Yancey's coined term, un-grace, I learned to placate, to try over and over to make things ok, to smooth over, to earn love that I could keep. To hide my light under a bushel so no one would be threatened, would think I was making some negative comment about them. To never laugh too loud, to never show my joy. To learn to play by the poisonous rulebook, even though all my efforts never made anything ok.

Thankfully, I was made by another Father before I was schooled in that place. A Father Who laughs in rivers and roses and delights in His Children, Who participates in their journey to discover how they might shine. He is not about a lonely little girl, hiding, He is about unveiled faces, made to reflect His glory.

I'm still learning. To let Him shine through my brokenness. To throw away that other rulebook and stop drinking the poison. To experience His mystical healing inwardly, and to really see the outward, practical reality that the old way of doing things never ever worked. To calmly speak the truth and walk away respectfully, quietly, but away. To accept the love I could never earn that will never let me go. To trade a toxic corrosive meal for bread and wine that empowers with contagious love.

Not falling into the old patterns is a daily discipline. For me, dysfunction seems to operate like an addiction. I must set boundaries for myself, for my behavior. I'm asking myself lots of questions about the motivations of my words and actions. I'm trying to accept that I am only finally responsible for myself.

Parenting is pretty terrifying when all you have to go on from your own childhood experience is, "well, not like that." But my prayer for my boys is that they see a mother dependant on God, flawed but growing, able to ask and to give forgiveness freely, well-versed in simple pleasures and extravagant in gratitude. To open my arms to these things, I am laying down some old burdens and living lighter.

At times I may sing a one-note song, but having finally been able to experience the pure genius of a clothespin or the magic scent of sun-warmed clover, the sacrificial love of my husband and the unfettered delight of my children, I feel new-born and given the gift of eyes to see, ears to hear, lips to speak.

Enough is as Good as a Feast

2009-06-12T09:15:00.000-04:00

Some days you have it on your list to blog. And you have many pretty ideas swimming about, a few recipes, some photos of local strawberries in a handmade bowl, ready to pull from the camera. And then you decide to roll through your Google Reader, and do the internet leapfrog from one link to the next, and before you know it, you have that pleasantly full feeling. That sense of just right. When I read some words on wealth, some words on gratitude, some words on the peace of doing your best, breathing in, saying yes, well, they were enough. I didn't need to add my own today, just offer you a spoonful from the bowls of others. Go for a taste, to Simple Mom, to Brad Ruggles, to Gluten Free Girl.

Sometimes the peace is in knowing when to push back, quietly, from the table, and smile and think and be.

Edited to add: Just like the morsel of dark chocolate that perfectly finishes a meal, or the last swallow of red wine that melds all the flavors before it together, Ann's beloved voice speaks.

Good Things

2009-06-08T19:06:00.001-04:00

Hello Monday peeps! Summer has really arrived here, and with it a bunch of goodness. What treasures are you finding in these fresh mornings and long, warm afternoons?

--Fun-boys out of school means more lazy read aloud time. We have continued our adventures with Portia, Julian and company.
--Garden is really coming along. We've had a couple of sugar snap pea feasts, and these will be steamed for tomorrow night's supper.
--Some local art and thrifty goodness, details to follow later this week.
--Starting to plan a few days away in July, on to North Carolina to our best friends from college. We love these people. We love their kids. Their kids love our kids. It is a big lovefest, really. Mountains, waterfalls, hiking and vineyards will likely also make an appearance. Photography enough to make my outdated version of photoshop elements finally implode. Good times, good times.
--Cinnamon Rolls. This recipe. Sweet mercy. Excuse me while I belt out the chorus of "The Search is Over" by Survivor. Perfectly light, just the right sugar and spice. King Arthur never lets me down-- why do I stray?
--This delicious production of Persuasion. How is it that every time, I am on the edge of my seat. Can Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth find their way back to each other? sigh
--So thankful for the extra time and slower pace this season brings. Happy for the glimpses of my boys' hearts I get to see, for the art they can linger over, for Popsicles on the patio and bunk beds made into forts with the magic of sheets.
--Dear friends nearing the flight that will bring their little girl home.

I've had enough dark times to see this for what it is-- a sweet time to be gathered and savored, but also to be flung outward with an open hand, sharing joy and fresh loaves of bread and beloved books, garden produce and photographs and kind words, and thus counting those blessings twice.

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
Luke 6:37-39

Soak Up the Sweet

2009-06-04T13:23:00.000-04:00

There is nothing I love like a challenge, especially when it encourages me to share something good I should have written about long ago. This spring I read a delightful book, Cold Tangerines by Shauna Niequist. It was both bracing and sweet, a book of essays about finding grace and beauty and the work of God in the humble, and sometimes painful and messy everyday. You can read a sample and a bit more about Shauna here.

What I found so refreshing about this book is that the examples and stories are as real as olive oil soaking into good bread or the stiff wind at sunset- this is life, authentic grace. Not a lot of vague reminders to "count your blessings," but the spiritual and spirited discipline of finding loveliness in the midst of the unlovely.

Shauna is working on two more books (yay) and blogging as well. Pay her a visit and soak up the sweet.

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines

2009-06-04T09:06:00.000-04:00

Last day of school today, a half day. Summer officially begins on our family calendar at noon. It is a humid, rainy Thursday, so there will be Matchbox cars, drawings, and reading aloud. Tomorrow, a visit with my sister, an outing or two (can you say the $1 rack at Goodwill?) and dinner out to celebrate.

I was walking back up the driveway last night, soaking up the late afternoon gold, and feeling so filled up and thankful, really cradled in all my commonplace blessings. And this morning I'm glad to move into this new season with such a spirit of peace and simple joy.

Wishing you the same.

A Mother's Most Exercised Muscle

2009-06-01T20:21:00.000-04:00

It is the last week of school. This morning I attended Kindergarten Awards Day, which brings it home, finally and firmly, that small-child days are over. A touchingly tortuous slide show revealed faces that, over the nine months past, have lost much of their dear chub. First day of school clothes would not fit these tall kids now. When they come back, it is Big School all the way, baby.

And I mourned. Just as I did last fall when the preschool years were behind me. My "baby" is my second child, so I know the drill. Next year will be a little more serious, a little more down to business, and the year after, centers will have disappeared, as will the trails of macaroni and glitter in the bottom of the backpack. Like a snap, like a shot, in a blink. . .

I'm sometimes embarrassed by this tide of emotion that sweeps over me at every transition, how I feel such sorrow for the days that have passed and the fleeting nature of the very present. But I won't buck up or push down these feelings, for they are born of savoring the richness of every season of these little people God has given me. I'm trying to keep this heart tender, so it can stretch and grow to hold their ever-widening futures, hurting perhaps but never breaking, sore but warm. Always training for the next stage of fierce loving and letting go.

"There is no frigate like a book. . . "

2009-05-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

We've started our summer season of reading aloud a bit early this year, making for a nice transition between school days that are winding down quickly and the slower, less clock-focused, warmer days. I discovered the gem Gone Away Lake through the new PBS Parents blog Booklights, and it is a perfect way to ease into summer. It has the nostalgic, mosquito-slapping, mildly mysterious tone of summer books I remember from childhood. Lots of completely un-plugged kids, exploring on bikes and making collections and forts, heading out for daily adventures after their chores are done.

I spend a lot of time in this season reading book reviews and book blogs, amassing the pile of stories the boys and I will work our way through for the next couple of months. Last summer is a hard act to follow, spent as it was with the Penderwicks and Trixie Belden, Despereaux and the Cricket in Times Square.

In the winter and spring we first tasted the delights of the Mysterious Benedict Society, Harry Potter and Redwall. I've been delighted with the stories that have come our way, and I'm so happy for the long afternoons to come, draped on chairs on the patio, or on the sofa under the fan in the family room. Maybe we'll have another adventure with Trixie or Nancy or the Hardy Boys, and I'm pretty sure more Elizabeth Enright will make our summer stack.

As the mom here, there are not just the books we enjoy together, but the ones that inspired and continue to fire my love for the magical sum of parents + kids + books, The Read Aloud Handbook and Seeing Past Z. And this will be the summer I finally read Honey for a Child's Heart, which promises to deepen my desire to make that place in each day to share great stories with my guys, which enrich and broaden our own family chronicles.

Clarity

2009-05-27T13:25:00.001-04:00

This photo shows that the sun does shine in this part of the world. Usually by now, we are wondering where the rain is. But this year, it is here. Every day. Buckets of it. The garden grows. New perennials are happy. Just not too much natural light photography going on. Maybe a few raindrops on roses. . .

But fortunately there's been a different sort of illumination and focus going on around here. A few months ago, thanks to Facebook, I reconnected with my best best friend from seventh grade, who had moved to Indiana only a few months after we discovered each other, who came to be with me the summer my father had a stroke, a few weeks before he died.

I have not seen her in twenty years.

Our middle school friendship and late high school follow-up had all the intensity of youth-- born from meeting one of those people who lets you know-- you are okay. Traversing the social currents of middle school, my hands empty, my canoe swamping daily with everything I didn't get, she got, well, me. She really saw me. She made me laugh, I made her laugh. We bonded in our awkwardness, but not only that. We were not only defined by what we were not to everyone else, but we were kindred spirits because of who we were.

Hearing her voice on the phone after years and years last Friday, I found the bonds stretched over time, but never broken. I could hear the girl I'd loved and the woman she has become. We talked good-humoredly but gently about those seventh grade girls we had been. We looked at our old selves with great kindness. We were thankful together. And we summed up the twenty years gone-- the educations and jobs and husbands and babies and callings and answerings and dreams. We talked about the good work to be done. We talked about the wounds of childhood, facing truths and finding grace, about the sometimes weary repitition of healing and wounding and healing again. We have both experienced the relentless tenderness of Jesus, to borrow Brannan Manning's phrase.

She found me again, and I found her. Another mark of grace. In my pursuit of language and beauty I often feel very near to my own childhood self, and the time talking to my old friend let some more light in for the journey, and linked me to another traveling companion.

What Must Be Said, Or Seen

2009-05-14T10:06:00.000-04:00

It is all very well to say that you make art for yourself. It is even partly true. Because making art is too soul-sifting, too impractical, too hard to do if it does not feed you at the root of your life in some way that nothing else does. It it comes down to it, it is easier to have a cleaner house and a more buttoned up soul.

But I don't just make art for myself. I make it for the flash of delight in someone's eye when they connect with an image I've captured, the pulse of recognition at a phrase I've turned. Like clicking tumblers in a combination lock, art, artist and viewer/reader lock together in a moment of clarity and grace.

So putting that bit of my heart out there, a bit of the creative work God has given me to do, that has started nagging at me. There is a next step to be taken. My confidence, never high, grows queasy. Accuses me with the images and words of a million gifted women. Scoffs at this restlessness that plucks at my sleeve. This fretful voice that says I should be showing, speaking, putting my work out there in a more organized way argues with my many misgivings.

But I think I am on a journey toward finding a wider world for what I make.

I don't know the next step-- a book to write and photograph for? Etsy prints? Pursuing consideration for the gallery at our local arts mission?

I don't know what the next step is, but I am sensing that there is one. I am thoughtful, humble, careful, but beneath my naturally cautious nature, there is something to be spoken, something to be seen. Time to make a window.

Neighborly

2009-05-12T12:24:00.001-04:00

Our yard is coming, slowly but surely. Last year was the year of garden infrastructure. We took the only spot in our yard that gets enough sun, hauled in dirt to make it level. built raised beds to grow our vegetables and herbs, surrounded the lot with a little fence, and happily grew lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, squash and a few peas and beans.

This year, putting in the vegetable garden was less effort and expense, and we could turn our attention to the beds around the house, long neglected and home only to overgrown hollies and nandina. And red clay. We've clipped and cleaned out and mulched and fed, and with many trips to Lowes and ours Farmer's Market plant sale, begun to fill in gaps and encourage ground covers.

I've had a couple of minor triumphs. My four roses are flourishing and my fuchsia peony, gift from my neighbor, bloomed for the first time. She came across the street as we were working. the bouquet pictured in her hand, with promises to share her glorious white peony with me come fall.

As we walked around together, as I showed her what we were doing, as we discussed the different colors of coral bells, I felt a oneness with women over the years, who have shared snips and roots of flowers over their fences, to make beauty with a little dirt and a common miracle. I understand the sort of woman who would salvage a cutting from a tumbling homeplace, so she could nurture a bloom planted by her grandmother's grandmother. My own Virginia grandmother grew the most glorious flowers with no garden books or training, just fresh country air and great quantities of chicken manure for fertilizer. :-) I hope someday I can be the one who translated neighborliness into seeds and bulbs and the friendly faces of flowers, and spread that language. For now I am ahppy and blessed to be a student of it.

Befriending My Own Worst Enemy

2009-04-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

It has taken me a long time to figure out how to feed contentment, to foster the peace I crave in my heart, to have the sense of "enough." I love a pretty home, I crave a lovely environment. My eyes and ears are tickled by all the Madison Avenue siren songs. How do they go. . . ? "Well, it is not that you're not great, you're FABULOUS, darling, but just not quite fabulous enough. . . this outfit will make you happy with your body, this chair will make that house a home, drink this and you'll have lots of friends and be a better parent, better cook, better, more, just a little. . . " If course, if the words were as blatant, I could hear their tune, not just feel them as a faint hunger in my spirit. It has taken me a long time to accept that in our culture of consumption, that is fueled by messages of discontent and painted with broad brushes that blend need and want, to fill us with the urge to buy more and more stuff to put in a hole stuff will never fill. . . that I have to pursue contentment itself aggressively. I can't afford, budget-wise, or spirit-wise, to be my own worst enemy.

All those home magazines can be fun sometimes, and I've got my share of tear sheets of looks I've reproduced at home, flexing fun and creativity, but I need to read them with one finger on my contentment pulse. If I find myself lingering too longingly over palatial bathrooms or imagining a better life is a matter of granite countertops or more square footage, they need to go.

Some time ago we got rid of cable tv and with it my staple, HGTV. I thought I would be lost without a fix of makeovers and house hunting, but I've been surprised how much better my four walls look when they're not the backdrop for endless change and "improvement" on the small screen.

We go to the store when we need things. This sounds pretty obvious, but we make lists, we check things out online ahead of time if we can, and we plan our trips. Shopping for entertainment, aside from the occasional Goodwill trip, is a thing of the past.

Good, old-fashioned counting our blessings always increases our sense of wealth in the things that matter. I've added to that the flip side-- when I allow my contentment to be disturbed by the desire for something I can't have, I dig a bit to unearth the lie I'm believing about that purchase. My needs have always been met, so if I don't have that shiny new thing, it must be a want. What false lack am I feeling?

Finally, not to be motivated by guilt, but to broaden the spectrum of the world I see, meditating on real need, here at home and overseas, helps me take my eyes off of myself and restores a right perspective. And what I save from the stuff mart can contribute to real change.

At the end of the day, I know my happiness is not measured by my belongings, the home we live in, the car we drive, and it helps to remind myself that my habits, the images and conversation and information I consume, can be a help or hindrance in the pursuit of a contented life. I've found a little compassionate self-reflection goes a long way. Then I always seem to reach for a cup already overflowing.

The Next Day: Still Singing

2009-04-23T11:04:00.000-04:00

Rich Mullins has been gone, home to heaven, for more than a dozen years now. He saw through the lens of Creation the One he now knows face to face.

"The Color Green"
by Rich Mullins
from A Liturgy, a Legacy, and a Ragamuffin Band

And the moon is a sliver of silver
Like a shaving that fell on the floor of a Carpenter's shop
And every house must have it's builder
And I awoke in the house of God
Where the windows are mornings and evenings
Stretched from the sun
Across the sky north to south
And on my way to early meeting
I heard the rocks crying out
I heard the rocks crying out

Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise

And the wrens have returned and they're nesting
In the hollow of that oak where his heart once had been
And he lifts up his arms in a blessing for being born again
And the streams are all swollen with winter
Winter unfrozen and free to run away now
And I'm amazed when I remember
Who it was that built this house
And with the rocks I cry out

Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green

Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise

Hear him sing it again here.

Green is a Common Sense Color

2009-04-22T07:31:00.000-04:00

Today is Earth Day. There is lots of information about the condition of our water and our air, where and how we get our food and what's in it, whether the planet is getting hotter.

There is a way in which I don't understand how this becomes such a hotly political issue. We all only have this planet to live on. It must be that we have sullied what we did not make, with our paving and our chemicals and our cars. But I do understand that these are complex issues, and the solutions are not clear-cut, and are worth debating. One seeming answer to one problem creates a host of others. No matter which lever you pull each November, it is enough to make the head spin.

So on Earth Day, I'm pretty happy to not be a policy maker, to be one home-manager and mom. Because I can step smaller and more lightly upon the Earth, and so many of those choices meet at the delightful intersection of frugality, responsibility, and simpler living, where we try to pitch our family's tent.

--Laundry dried on the line saves energy, lowers the electric bill, and saves wear and tear on clothing. Turning off lights and using power strips bring down those bills too. Using "natural wonder" cleaners like vinegar and baking soda is cheaper and keeps scary chemicals out of our home environment.
--Buying less stuff is clearly better for the budget. Less energy (both people and power) is used to maintain the home where less stuff lives. Less stuff=less packaging. Purchasing fewer items, or buying them used when possible, encourages creativity.
--I've found that waiting for the right second-hand purchases, or making do with what we have, increases my sense of gratitude. Since there is a pause before the "run to the -mart and buy a brand-new one" solution, that is a moment to appreciate God's provision and the art of possibility.
--Consolidating trips to the store, planning meals, and making good lists to ensure fewer trips results in less stress, less gasoline used, less wear and tear on vehicles, and less opportunities to spend money. It is so easy to purchase an extra item here and there, and those add up quickly.
--Spending more time at home, carefully choosing commitments to lots of other activities, saves gas and energy and money, but I've found, with my kids, even better payoffs. They get along better, because they have to. Because less of their time is structured and planned out, they have to get creative with play and artwork. They have time to read for pleasure. 95% of the time, we sit down for family dinners. Our pace of life as a family is much slower than many of our peers, but just right for us.
--Trying to curb our consumption of resources, whether natural resources, income, or time, has resulted in more mindful living. And the result is really a life that suits us well. All our assets are finite, and we want to spend them on a life that won't impress anyone else, perhaps, but one that expresses our family well.
--Having a garden gives us fresh produce to eat that we only have to walk out the kitchen door to enjoy, and provides a living lab for our boys.
--Finally, thinking through and implementing ways to live a greener lifestyle helps me to appreciate that we have so much freedom and flexibility in our personal choices here, but we share this planet with many brothers and sisters who cannot imagine both the richness and the autonomy of even a simpler American lifestyle. Can the choices I make here rest less heavily on them?

Though I can be political, living greener is not political for me. Nor is it about running out and buying lots of "green products," or being the trendiest girl on the bandwagon.

Simply put, I did not make this ground on which I step, or paint the sky. Of my will, I cannot make a single blade of grass grow, or a stem bud and then flower. I am here as witness and steward, and worshiper of the Maker. I want to treat less callously what He made. And with a clothespin, a homemade meal, a planted seed, give thanks.

Six

2009-04-17T08:25:00.001-04:00

IMG_3140
Originally uploaded by kempmissy

My "baby" Sam is six years old today. There is so much about this little guy that makes me smile-- his unstoppable personality, his insatiable appetite for drawing, the way his arrival made our family complete. Happy Birthday, dearest of little boys!

Spring's First Rose

2009-04-16T18:49:00.000-04:00

April 16, sunny and breezy. This little lady found her way inside via my husband's hand. Is there any sweeter fragrance than the first rose after winter?

It Put a Smile on My Face

2009-04-16T12:22:00.000-04:00

For those of you who've been reading here awhile, you know I talk a good game about process over product, being fully present in the moment, the peace of acceptance, the wonder of "good enough." And yet, I have a really hard time attempting things I am pretty sure I won't be that good at.

I've had this book for a couple of months now, and have been reading Kelly Rae Roberts' blog since late last year. Her work makes me so happy. Her encouragement to make art that speaks our story is everywhere in her book and in her own art. And yet, I've only been dipping my fingertips into the book, reading a page here and there, admiring but not attempting.

Until Tuesday. Worn with being sick for a couple of weeks, wanting something else, a bigger canvas than the cards I spent the morning making, I made the "belonging" collage in the pictures. I was inspired by Taking Flight, and the patterned paper flower was drawn from this collaborative painting Kelly Rae did with a friend. But I didn't have all the "right" materials. I didn't start with much of a plan. I really didn't know what I was doing.

ModPodge, scrapbook paper from my now abandoned hobby, a few words, a few punches, paint under my fingernails and a sticky desk top. And smiling like a little kid. Making a mess. Playing and playing until steps that seemed like mistakes at first got to be the best parts. Not stopping to lament my lousy cutting skills or the air bubbles underneath my pasted patches. Getting to the end, letting it dry, hanging it in the family room. Seeing all its imperfections and being so happy with it. Happy with myself. Happy with the hour or so I spent just making and being.

And now I am really excited for summer. For some more canvases and paints, for a couple of boys who would love to collaborate in an afternoon of messiness and making. For the only bar of "good enough" to be "did we have fun in the during?"