A Glimpse
If you look out my kitchen window you catch a glimpse of our backyard.
The rosebushes, messy grass, arborvita.
Wooden trim frames the window. Curtains flutter from the tension rod inside the sill.
This is the visual. This is what you see.
Yet it’s a fraction of the whole, a paragraph apart from the whole story.
You won’t see that this window went without trim for nine years.
At one time, it held wooden shutters instead of a rod.
And through the pane is also only the smallest snippet.
You can’t see the landscape of lovely autumn leaves. The firepit. Kittens pouncing among leaves.
No sign of the picnic table or outside sink.
The point is this is a picture of our lives.
Of who we are as people.
Even friends we know very well. Our spouses. Our children.
Most of the time as we’re walking around and going to and from and talking and ordering coffee and attending meetings and teaching classes and checking out groceries and chopping vegetables and writing a diagnosis and operating a road grader and keeping our grandkids and posting on IG, we only catch a glimpse of who a person is, a brief segment of the life they live, a miniscule microscopic look at one fragment of their life.
Often, it’s easy to think we have a whole summation, to label, to type, to name when we’ve yet to go below the surface and we’re only peeking through the window pane.
For all of us carry both/and.
We’re all complex and complicated.
We all carry burdens and beauty, grief and grace. Challenges and cheer.
Ugliness and great deeds of kindness.
On our best days, we show up with ourselves, as ourselves, yet even then its never quite fully who we are. Never completely known or seen.
And as life runs along a circuit of seasons and rhythms, we are forever changing, always making introduction within ourselves to new aspects of ourselves.
The challenge then?
To remember there is so much more beyond the windowpane.
The Delight of Saturday
Tea leaves swirl, steep, settle.
Candle flames, fans, flickers.
Clock ticks, tocks, times.
Windchime stirs, sounds, sings.
Mug warms, welcomes, wafts.
Light filters, flows, fills.
Photo frames, freezes, feels.
Words ponder, play, prance.
Blanket cozies, cuddles, cloaks.
Toast bakes, browns, butters.
Saturday stills, slows, savors.
Life is Tangly
Life is tangly.
No getting around it.
No two ways around it.
No avoiding it.
No denying it.
No way round it.
No uninevitability.
However you say it, the tangles and trips, heartaches and hits, faceplants and full on panic attacks cannot be refused or denied.
Live a day or five thousand nine hundred and twenty, and life is going punch you when you least expect it.
It’s going to show up mean and come out swinging.
And the blunt truth about it in our living, breathing, walking around human experience, it’s not fun, it’s not cute, and it will leave you retching.
I text a friend three states away. “I’m so sorry.” I say.
The tangles and knots have had a stranglehold the last few months.
When the pummeling won’t quit. Life continues to hit. The messiness multiplies.
We choke. Gasp. Grasp for a lifeline. Some days theΒ #liturgyofthelittlethings
looks like lifting up the hands that hang down, offering a shoulder to the head hung low, sharing shuddering sobs with someone sunk in sorrow.
Some days it looks like being the person lifted by the love of others.
A List of Little Things to Love as Autumn Wanes
β’ sitting across the table from your daughter + friend at the coffeeshop
β’ warm caramel and thin apple slices
β’ a crackling fire in the Solo stove on a still evening
β’ pulling the fuzzy furry blanket from the shelf and piling it on the couch
β’ walking through the leaves around the dog kennel
β’ words + leaves + handlettering
β’ soup simmering ~ savoring soup
β’ the goodness of slow
β’ twinkle lights and candles twinkling
β’ hot coffee with heavy cream
β’ cookies with oatmeal and butter, brown sugar and mms
β’ beginning a new novel
β’ writing gratitude in purple ink
β’ adding to the list of movies you want to watch
β’ breath prayers in all the corners of your days
β’ finding the recipe for French bread
β’ oranges and reds and yellows and greens
β’ wearing a favorite hat
Live Life in Celebration
We sit across from our accountant.
We sort numbers, talk business, run through account codes.
We discuss the variables we can control when it comes to the gamble of farming.
{Newsflash: Not Many}
Before we push back our chairs, gather our coats, phones, and paperwork, he lays his pencil on his desk and adds this word.
“As people in Christ, we get to live from a place of thanksgiving. We get to live joyful. We can be joyful.”
It’s true. In a world gone sideways, always a bit wobbly, rife with war and death and grief and hardship,
in a world of broken relationships, bills and broken-down equipment, joy brings the beauty.
We run errands, eat a late lunch, slip into Milkfloat for coffee and dessert.
And there it is. Lettered large along the wall.
CELEBRATE DESSERT.
It’s a delightful sign for a delightful shop.
It’s also an invitation.
Love the little things. Slow down and savor. Live with joy and delight.
I sip my huckleberry milkshake. Crumbs from my farmer’s pumpkin chocolate chip cookie linger on the napkin.
The door jangles. A mama enters with her daughter. She’s wearing a pink tee. Graphic art balloons bookend the script across the front.
“Get carried away with life,” it reads.
The third proclamation for the day, another gentle nudge of joy.
Celebrate! Get Carried Away! Life is a joyful gift!
Stillness
Silence is not the same as stillness.
Our souls can still even as the world buzzes.
Stillness isn’t automatic. It doesn’t come readily available at the push of a button.
Sitting with our souls and stilling isn’t actually easy.
It’s called a practice, a discipline for a reason. It requires showing up.
It requires work. It requires focused attention.
There is sacrifice involved. Intention must be implemented.
Outward attentions must fade away and inward attention receive the warmest welcome.
I read it in more than one book.
Our souls are shy.
We must wait patiently, coax gently, step lightly.
It’s no wonder we often find ourselves confused, careening, chaotic.
Life is served so hastily. Noise and schedules and demands are thrown at us in rapid succession.
Stillness, our souls, and stillness in our souls suffocate before they can even breathe.
It’s much easier to ride the raft of distraction than row to the shore of discernment.
It’s much easier to mindlessly shift to the next spectacular motion or movement than to muster the desire to step into the “musts.”
There will never be a harvest of settledness without first the bloom of stillness.
I hold the tension of these thoughts.
My feet find the dirt road beneath them.
My eyes notice the patterns of tiny specks of sand.
My ears listen to the sound of harvest.
My breath falls deep in my lungs and rises full in my chest.
A created being I bask in the beauty of the Creator, the beauty of creation.
My soul stills.
And catches up.
