cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
When I bought a hanging pot of pansies last October, it was to replace a broken bird feeder that squirrels kept raiding. We moved the bird feeder to a more rodent-proof spot but were left with an empty porch hook—a spot for hanging flowers, I decided. The pansies were dark purple and glorious. Their pot…
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Almost every day my oldest daughter drinks a chocolate shake out of her green Paw Patrol bottle—one she loves for the dogs, not the characters. This shake is, of course, not just any chocolate shake. It’s packed full of various greens and nutrients, with a couple of vitamins crushed into it because I’m an opportunist.
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Lately, I feel like I did as a child, when I would spin and spin in circles until I fell to the ground with dizziness. As a little girl this was fun. As an adult, not so much. In the past five years I can’t seem to find a single thing that I haven’t examined.…
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I am done proving me. My life is not one prolonged job interview, a permanent Olympic trial, an ongoing all-state music audition. I am not a college application for admissions officials to peruse, an employee scrutinized for business acumen or her annual performance review, an associate striving to make partner. I refuse to be
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I exit an evening exercise class to daylight. Contrasted with the darkness of prior weeks, the streaks of pink in the sky invite me to hope. I feel a brightening in my spirit. The light always returns! This season, my soul mirrors the winter weather pattern of the valley where I live. One day all…
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If you ever find a picture of me from my senior year in high school, you will not find the traditional hallmarks of 1990’s grunge. Rather, you will find a tie-dye wearing, sandaled, all-natural kind of gal who was clearly reacting to the world around her. My backpack was littered with greatest hits discs of…
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I breathe in the quiet of this day, a welcome pause in the middle of a full summer.
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The call to prayer echoed down the canyon between Istanbul and Ankara as we sat in our circle high in the mountains.
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I remember asking Mark, “Who will pick us up at the airport, your mom and dad?”
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“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down one can help the other up.” Ecclesiastes 4:9-10
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