So, friends, I had a birthday last week and keep meaning to write All The Profound Thoughts.
But looking at this picture of myself, I kind of feel like not much has changed in the last 20 years: seriously, y’all, look—tie-dye, cut-offs, flip-flops, sassy hair. It’s basically high-school me. I’m even wearing a late-90s ankle bracelet. In fact, my college roommate said that last year: you two haven’t changed a bit since college, she told me and my lobster.
But there’s been change, of course, and not just in the extra thirty pounds I’m carrying around, but in grander things: in trajectory, in life plans, in expectations, in attention. There’s been much heartbreak and dissatisfaction but also, if you’ve been around here enough, much holy and joyful. I’ve got more conviction and also more empathy.
I’m pretty good with this me that I’m growing into, but I know seasons are changing, and those summer tomatoes rotting on the vine are the reasons we will have volunteers next spring. Everything is a metaphor, this I know. Parables are my jam.
Friends, these are not All Of The Profound Thoughts, in case you wondered. But it’s all I’ve got on this Friday night. Because tomorrow: the parable of the Ikea cabinet assembly. 👊🏼👊🏼👊🏼
When I unclipped this quote from my curtain above the sink in order to empty out our kitchen this weekend for the remodel, I realized that it doesn’t actually matter what the backdrop of any particular season is, the words still ring true. I am grateful in my bones for this life, heartache and interruption and all. Because that’s where grace is.
Grace isn’t found in these little IG squares, friends. Because they don’t show real life, not really even a fraction of it. We’ve all got the broken-hearts, shared-in-person, tears-and-brokenness baggage that we’re trailing behind us, or weighing our hearts down. (I hope you have people to live that with you.) And we’ve also got laughter and joy and Sacred scratching up our arms alongside mosquito bites. (Or maybe that’s just our house.) And if you’re like me, what you’ve got in spades is life that feels mundane and full and inconvenient with a few sore muscles and too long of to-do list so you just can’t even.
But I hope, genuinely hope, in spite of it all, you can carve out some gratitude, friends, for this life you’re wrapped in this evening. And I hope that gratitude can turn you outward toward love, and also inward toward love.
Have peace, friends. This life is enough. You are enough.
That’s grace.
#ordinarytime #allaboutthatgrace
Y’all, I’m grateful for a friend who brings dinner because my kitchen is a crazy mess and then also offers to watch my kids for a million hours while we are at IKEA today. And I’m grateful for a neighbor’s old truck to borrow multiple days this week—to bring cement board home from Lowe’s and to load up with the old cabinets to take to the Habitat ReStore. And I’m grateful for a handy husband, who may be getting a little more tired and a little more achy a little more quickly than he used to, but still impresses and inspires me, 18 years into this life we share.
But maybe most of all, tonight, I’m grateful for this 1950s fixer upper and these crazy green floors that have sparked conversations and poems and many batches of cookies, hosted dozens of potlucks and gathered strangers and friends into our home for the long haul, cushioned our feet through grief as well as sleepless nights of rocking babies, never complained about splashes of dishwater or tears or the time my giant Pyrex bowl shattered and I just couldn’t even. These floors have stuck to my flip flops in the hottest days of the year while we canned tomatoes and not begrudged my shearling lined slippers the rest of the year.
What I’m saying is, I’m not sad, but I am grateful, for the season that was, the season that is, and the season that is to come.
Also, I’m grateful my dad made me learn to use a drill way back when.
#fixerupper #oldhouselove #handlettering #sharpiesftw #sacredordinarydays
And sometimes your last night with green linoleum is also your birthday. 💚🧁💚🧁💚 Y’all, I have lots to say about the year behind and the year ahead and settling into this late-30s beautiful, weepy, empathetic, Sacred season. But, I’ll be honest, right now I’m staring into four sweaty days of no bottom cabinets and our refrigerator living in the dining room. So hold that thought, friends. But come on over for cupcakes!
#hello37 #thisoldhouse #myhusbandswifeisfreakingawesome #andherhusbandistoo #itsallholyground #eventhestickyparts
The labors of this day: first-time-ever sewing practice and button sorting, hot-gluing puff balls onto a cardboard tube and a paper planet just because, being served playdoh ice cream and blue zucchini without explanation. You know, a usual Tuesday.
Also, neighbors and running and phone calls with old friends and playgrounds and tears and cramps and it really was pretty hot and a birthday phone call from Grandma and maybe some grumpiness on the part of the mom in this family, who may or may not have really needed the midday prayer from Every Moment Holy.
O Christ our rest,
We pause amidst the labors of this day
to remember the best reason for our laboring... — @everymomentholy
#handlettering #itssimplytuesday #sacredordinarydays
