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The faith of our youth…
When my kids were little, I had visions of our shared future. I imagined myself surrounded each Sunday morning with a throng of kids and grandkids filling a couple of pews in my local church. My hope was not without precedent. I had seen extended families gathered, maybe not every week, but often for holidays like Easter and Christmas. I looked longingly when I saw families of multiple generations gathering to worship together in the pews of our little church, and hoped someday we might fill our pew with a gang of worshippers in their Sunday best. Share this...FacebookPinterestTwitterLinkedin
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Overflow living…
So, what if I am busy and popular if I don’t have time and space to enjoy my days. So, what if I am needed but not known. So, what if I have all the things, there will always more things to be had. Over the past few years, I have struggled to find a new way to measure my life.
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Dear Colton,
Keep in mind, they are new to this parenting thing. They’ve been to all the classes and prepared in every way imaginable. In fact, if you ask me, they already know too much. What they don’t know is all the ways you will reshape their lives from the inside out.
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This is the good stuff…
Maybe the most important thing I took from that season was a new awareness that my purpose doesn’t lie out there somewhere, but right here in the ordinary cadence of my days. Who am I to love and serve? Let me see, who I can see from here?
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Joy in real life…
Brene Brown says, “Joy is the most vulnerable emotion.” Maybe, that’s why I have always struggled with it. I open my heart to experience the exquisite beauty of this moment, but I know it cannot last. The sunset that paints the sky in sherbet colors of orange, gold, and lavender will soon fade to dusk. The moment of pure laughter and connection will soon shift back to living side by side. The smell of a warm baby, just out of the bath, gives way to a defiant tween. A long slow summer Sunday afternoon, too quickly turns to Monday morning. We don’t give ourselves over to joy in order to…
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The Strong Ones…
this space has become a place where we can be both. There are places in my life that require me to be strong. There are a few places that allow me to be weak. There are very few that support me when I’m both. Around this table, we have created a space for both.
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Parenting adults… a parallel journey
Our experiences were on a parallel track, and while I could appreciate the beauty of her journey, I also found that I needed to feel the grief and loss of change in mine.
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Making new friends…
In this season of my life, I am realizing that new friendships are harder to come by. As my life has shifted and reshaped itself over time, there are fewer hours to find for new faces. Where once, we could spend long afternoons getting to know one another over slow cups of coffee, now we must fit it in between the blocks of our already overscheduled lives.
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What is saving my life today…
What is saving my life now is the conviction that there is no spiritual treasure to be found apart from the bodily experiences of human life on earth. My life depends on engaging the most ordinary physical activities with the most exquisite attention I can give them. My life depends on ignoring all touted distinctions between the secular and the sacred, the physical and the spiritual, the body and the soul. What is saving my life now is becoming more fully human, trusting that there is no way to God apart from real life in the real world.” Barbara Brown Taylor from An Altar in the World: A Geography of…
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Managing the gauges
I think about the video games my kids played. They had gauges measuring life, health, fire power, or strength. As the kids moved through the game, interactions might increase or decrease the health, strength, or fire power of a character. They were always looking at the life gauge that indicated when the game had come to an end.
