This particular passage never fails to convict me.  It is easy to overestimate the strength of our self-command until we are irritated, contradicted, or spoken to (or about) unkindly. They say the true test of what is inside of us is what spills out when we are upset. If so, there is still room to improve over here.  

As so often happens the spiritual and the practical overlap in our lives, applying layers of meaning to both. This lent coincides with some tremendous home improvement and spring cleaning. 

Tremendous. 

Cleaning and sorting our physical space provides a visual for the sort of work lent invites us to do. Likewise, spiritual discipline encourages me to look around my space and see where it could benefit from similar purging and reworking.  Short answer: lots of places.

Our tired little kitchen pantry has gotten some attention.  It had not been painted with the kitchen years ago and the shelving was peeling. The baseboards were still dark wood and didn’t match the rest of the kitchen.  and This was a low budget effort to be sure. Leftover paint and contact shelf paper brightened things up.  

For the record this is not the sum total of all the dry goods I keep on hand. We also have bulk bins of brown rice and oats nearby and a ridiculous number of spices and cake making items sorted in dish tubs in a cabinet. I’m finding less is more by way of storing food however.  We hit a critical mass point when we can’t easily see what we have.  That leads to wasted food and purchasing doubles.  For this reason I don’t plan to fill this space up too much more. 

This overlap is fleshed out in this essay. 

I don’t have many stories about my paternal grandmother, but one of them made a big impression on my mother.  When she was newly married she spent the day with her mother in-law.  After my grandfather left for work, grandma jumped into dinner preparation.

 That’s right. Dinner. 

She set the table, arranged the centerpiece, and began dusting. She finished everything the way it needed to be when the day was over and her husband would return.  She sprayed a bit of Pledge into the air with a flourish for good measure. Then she was free to do any fun things the day presented her with. 

As a very young woman who had not yet run a home, my mother suspected this was “cheating” in some way.  For that reason perhaps, I viewed this routine with some skepticism myself at first. Now, with many late dinners and messy evenings under my belt I look upon my grandmother’s morning chores with new appreciation. 

My house is still full all day, so I can’t always set my table first thing. This happens after lunch when we can.  I can still use that inspiration to start with the end in mind, always.  Later today  I am taking some older folks to a meeting.  After breakfast, I laid out my clothes and printed directions to each of the addresses. (I have no sense of direction and tend to get turned around last minute) A call to the venue confirmed the meeting room name and directions to it. We will clean out the van, pack the meeting items, and have some time to do other things before we go.  

I was not born organized. I’m still not there. At 51 there is no pretending things are going to fall into place without glitches.  Looking ahead to minimize those is a huge stress reducer. 

What does the end of your day look like?  What can you do early on to make sure it’s stress free?  Can you:

Defrost something

Set out materials or pajamas or bedtime books

Check the car for gas

Confirm directions or reservations 

If it’s the morning that starts off with a flurry of activity then all this can happen the night before. 

“We may say of a man that he is more often kind than cruel, more often wise than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic or vice versa; but it could never be true to say of one man that he is kind or wise, and of another that he is wicked or stupid. Yet we are always classifying mankind in this way. And it is wrong. Human beings are like rivers; the water is one and the same in all of them but every river is narrow in some places, flows swifter in others; here it is broad, there still, or clear, or cold, or muddy or warm. It is the same with men. Every man bears within him the germs of every human quality, and now manifests one, now another, and frequently is quite unlike himself, while still remaining the same man.”

Tolstoy

A long car trip afforded me many hours of quiet reading.  Truly this is a luxury right now. Though I do not share all of his positions, I so appreciate Tolstoy’s pleas for compassion and empathy and resisting the tendency to categorize each other.  We are indeed always classifying.

 I have begun to tell this story many times over the past months.  While my heart was overflowing with so many emotions, words escaped me. 

This story did not begin last fall, nor nine months before that, but rather two years ago when our daughter married a most wonderful young man.  She had a fairy tale courtship and a wedding fit for a princess.  They worked so very hard – juggling multiple jobs and school – to scrimp and save and make a lovely life together.  When they saw that little pink line shortly after they married we all naturally began to look ahead expectantly.  Plans were made, tentative first tiny booties were purchased – more out of pure delight than anything.  Ten weeks passed and two tiny babies were seen at the doctor's office.  Quickly it was determined they were no more.  

What followed was not one, but two more losses and a cancer scare.  We braced ourselved as they went for more tests to send along to the oncologist.  By this point we had come to expect bad news.  Once more there was a surprise, however.  There was no postpartum cancer.  There was Will, at that time just the promise of him, growing stronger week by week.  It took many weeks, months really, for the disbelief to wear off and the reality to set in.  By summer we were making maternity portraits and planning for a birth, though I still couldn’t bring myself to say much.   

In October, as the pregnancy began to wrap up, we drove east to meet our grandson. I don't know exactly how I envisioned that to unfold.  I don't think I had any expectations.  Just hope.  Fervent prayers.  I was still worried after all, and worn down from months of often frustrating advocacy work at home. While our daughter was growing a baby, we had taken in an elderly disabled gentleman, requiring a short course in social work and more actual hands-on work than could be imagined.  He needed respite care in order for us to leave and we just barely got that coordinated as contractions became more frequent.

On our drive to baby day, during an early morning coffee stop in the middle of Wyoming, I ended up chatting with the singular employee at the gas station while she made me coffee in a Keurig machine.  By the time coffee was in hand I had told her our story and she had told me about her daughter, newly pregnant after years of infertility, and we stopped and prayed together for the grandchildren we each dearly hoped to hold in our arms. I remember she took my hand in both of hers and assured me that if we honor God He would take care of us.  Without it being said, we both understood that was NOT a guarantee of smooth sailing, but assurance we would not move through the storm alone.  I left there buoyed by her prayers and with her email in hand to report back. (Yes, I still check in with dear Judy the coffee lady)

Two days later we were in a hopsital room watching the nurses place Moira’s IV's and our son in law change in surgical scrubs.  Baby Will was securely tucked, right-side-up, snugly under his momma's heart, so her first delivery would be c-section.  Amazingly, it was one of the most peaceful births you could imagine.  While we talked over birth plan preferences during her other pregnancies, she went into this one quite literally full of grace.  No white-knuckled grip on a particular plan.  She said she had a strong feeling it was going to be clear to her how it needed to be and she resolved to flex with whatever presented itself.  And she did.  When prepped, she quietly stood up from her bed, smiled, and they walked down the hall to the OR.  

When we all met again they were parents of a wide eyed little boy with a head full of black hair.  With that we became grandparents.  

I’m sharing a bit of back story to illustrate a few truths: first, that we can never know what the future holds – good or bad.  You never know all there is to know about someone else’s story, but it is safe to assume it is much more challenging than it appears. Even when your heart breaks for some time, circumstances can suddenly erupt with unexpected joy. And finally, some stories are better told once you see which way God is taking them.  The older I get the truer this verse is:

“….she pondered all this in her heart.”

It been quiet in this space for months I realize.  Occasionally I receive a gentle inquiry asking after us and wondering if there will be more posts.  By way of explanation I offer this meme.  Though it’s silly it is exactly what I do.  What I did. Turning down my inner volume and that of the many voices all around does help me navigate better. Even now I am experimenting with which medium(s) are the best fit for this time of my life. The jury is not yet in but it’s looking more and more like intimate, personal spaces which encourage more one on one interaction and reflection work best. 

A logistics challenge I am having is that I have not turned on my computer every day for months now.  This is not virtuous on my part since my creative outlets live there.  It’s also much easier to post from there. So it all resulted in not writing. The longer I did not write the more catching up there was to to do.  So writing got put off longer. You get this, right? To help with that particular challenge I am experimenting with posting from my phone. If this is all wonky, that’s the problem.

In brief, I am no longer a young mother or even just a mother of young people.  Moira and Mikey made us grandparents in October. Alannah moved to the Midwest for nursing school.  We miss them all terribly. In fact, missing them and our Colorado kids so very much we are taking active steps to be closer to all our adult children.  There have been many obstacles in our way in that regard but we persevere and are grateful these incredible people want us closer.  

More to follow. In the meantime thank you for reaching out.  I miss the names and voices that have come to be so dear to me here. If you’re still out here please say hello.  Let me know how this season is treating you and how you, too, may be striving for a quiet center in a loud world.  

Outside: 

It's not playing around.  It's fall now.  We have had our first freeze and in fact when the breeze picked up this morning it was like we were inside a little snow globe as stray frosty flakes blew off the roof.  Someone remind me I need to bring that geranium in.  

Wearing:

Boots.  I have my requisite pairs of black and brown boots for the season.  I pretty much wear sandals all summer and boots or clogs all winter.  It's a bad foot thing.  I've picked up more sweaters in anticipation of the trip across the mountain to help with the new baby – who will make his appearance very soon. (say a prayer!)

Creating:

Here and there.  The girls and their friend nailed a Pinterest project.  It is still surreal to me that my "little" girls are savvy enough to save and follow through with crafty pins. 

We also spread a sewing project over a couple Sunday afternoons, stitching up a goldenrod colored peasant blouse. It has been so very long since we tackled a whole sewing pattern.  I wish there was time for more!

In the kitchen:

There is juice.  There is a lot of juicing going on. I've been on a kick and really enjoying it, alternating green and orange based recipes.  

Around the house:

There are pumpkins and garlands and spicy tea. I wish it could be autumn all year, with the world bathed in gold and russet and cinnamon and mocha. 

The "big boys" came for the weekend and it was heavenly.  Truly.  It's funny because let me tell you these three were a handful back in the day. I was in way over my head with a houseful of boys and a military husband routinely off and away someplace. I wrangled and scolded and chased and corralled and cajoled. They found every humanly possible way to foil my best laid plans and skirt the rules.  And you know what?  These same boys now send ridiculous puns via messenger.  They drive me to games and make Starbucks runs, bringing back coffee with stevia and cream already mixed up.  They sit and watch 1981 BBC miniseries on their vacation because they read the book with me over the summer. They ask, "What do you think about___?" and they listen to the response. To say I am grateful is a gross understatement. 

From the learning room:

We have been following our lesson plans religiously knowing we will be having a baby year once again, for the first time in a decade.  It will be a different sort of baby year since it is now a grandbaby, but we still hope to split our time between here and there.  Those plans which once seemed so challenging now just come together so easily.  I suppose anything you do year after year eventually does.  When they bring me a questions for a reading passage I no longer need the answer key because I remember the story well from the seven or eight previous students. Since we are down to business right now we have been sticking close to plan, picking up just a few relevant library books and tapping into videos online to expand a topic.  This one coincided with a geography lesson on how topographical maps are made.  Some days are DIY days.  Some days it most definitely suffices to watch someone else do it and get the gist.  The key to homeschool happiness is correctly identifying those days. 

Reading: 

The Screwtape Letters.  And that's really it.  We have been pretty heavily involved in some local social services work and there has not been a lot of free time where I don't just fall asleep.  My goal is to read all the high school novels I did not get to with the other students so I am ready to discuss.  Screwtape it is right now. 

"There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October."  

Nathaniel Hawthorne

October is well underway.  It brought much needed, long awaited rain to the mountain west.  The mountaintops are peeking through fog right now which makes me so very happy, if also homesick for England.  

Autumn has rushed in this year with many demands on our hearts and our time, threatening to disrupt our peace if it could.  It has made some inroads in that regard.  We have been working hard to restore and maintain serenity amidst the trials.  It doesn't require new techniques, just a doubling down on the old paths: 

Prayer, especially with and for family and friends has tied heartstrings across the miles.  In prayer, I am feeling especially grateful for and close to dear ones far away.  Even though it isn't always said – though I am trying to be more mindful of actually saying so – the new babies born and struggling teens and brave patients fighting big battles are all right there with the beads in my hands. The names attached to the notes sent here in this space are never forgotten.

Journaling.  My bullet journal is still going strong.  It's not particularly artistic, but it now houses notes scribbled in throughout the better part of a year.  Some people journal their feelings.  I have lists.  Lists for the grocery, for Amazon, for the library books, the recipes, the schoolwork, the gift ideas. The older I get the more I love looking back at the lists. They are a snapshot of my life at different ages and stages. 

Re-forming the spaces.  I wrote a decade ago about the powerful effect the space has on little children.  There are no tiny people here right now but the same approach has worked its magic on bigger people.  "…by creating order around a restless or unruly child we can help instill ordered behavior from the outside in."  

Still true. 

Tranquility is elusive in some seasons.  The skills honed while nurturing little hearts are surprisingly helpful for meeting the challenges bigger people face.  Take care of your home.  Take care of your heart.  (The one goes a long way towards the other.) It blesses the people you love more than words can say.  

"People nowadays seemed to busy for gaiety, and what was worse, appeared to frown upon innocent enjoyment.  Life was too dreadfully real and earnest these days, thought Mrs. Bailey, and all the young people were middle-aged at twenty. 

If only people would realize that the light hearted…things were not any less significant than the violent and brutish, what a step forward it would be,,. Because a song, a book, a play, a picture, or anything created was gay it did not necessarily follow that it was trivial.  It might be, mused Mrs. Bailey gazing into the moving sunshine with unseeing eyes, a finer thing because it had been fashioned with greater care and artifice; emotion remembered and translated to give pleasure, rather than emotion remembered and evincing only an involuntary and quite hideous howl."    - Miss Read, Thrush Green