Quiet, Slow, and Thrilling

Today is a day for big thoughts.

Last year my sister met and began to love Levi, and today I finally board a plane to see them.  We've been waiting for this.  And guess what?  Sometimes life really is like a movie.  Call me sentimental, but I say that 'slow motion happy' is very real.  Tonight the comfort of my homey childhood will fill me up, just standing there with Levi and Jenna for two seconds at the airport.  And tomorrow morning I'll be having coffee with my sister in Texas.  This is quietly thrilling. 

Sometimes life is big in the minutes you wait through too.  Each minute this week is 'stolid, all things a century' to me because I'm waiting for news of a friend and her baby.  

New Page

I am doing that thing again where I stop and start, stop and start again with writing. (New page, new thoughts.) I think you call this writer's block.  Or 'scattered teacher with a complex that writing isn't as valuable as everything else you love'. 

Of course that's not true.  And that's what I must first declare in order to writ anything else past this one singular sentence.  A pause, a breath, an anchored thought is very worth the time.  What follows this of course is further stillness in chaotic, frenetic places. 

You level out and become more yourself and live in the world more freely when you give voice and credit to the thing you really love.   When you inhabit what you are passionate about, it stills things that needed to be stilled and enhances the rest of the story you're supposed to live. 

Invited Back

“I have also long held the belief that one's tears are a guide, that when something makes you cry, it means something. If we pay attention to our tears, they'll show us something about ourselves.” 

― Shauna Niequist, Bread & Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table, with Recipes

Morning Manifesto

Sometimes in this world there are songs that go right to your heart. 

Straight to you, past everything....all sounds and voices and distractions, and right to the place you needed to be tended.  I think that God does that to remind you of Himself and that you are, as a beloved person that He has made, being seen and talked to in your day.

Year 8 Begins

 

It's the first day of school. 

(!!!!!)

I am 8 years into the life of this profession, and I am happy to say that while I still picked out very carefully what I will wear, there is no longer a pit inside my stomach on these days.  I feel happy to be Miss Christians again.  I feel excited to meet 186 people again and welcome them to my class.  

Juxtaposed

This is what God feels like today.

Last night I received the terrible news that someone I knew and loved had died.  For the sake of grief and time and a thousand private thoughts, I'm refraining from sharing overly much here.  But I will say that it is loss of family in the 'walking-around life' of a close friend. I am feeling this from all sides. 

More Themselves Than Ever

"When He [God] talks of their losing their selves, He means only abandoning the clamour of self-will; once they have done that, He really gives them back all their personality, and boasts (I am afraid, sincerely) that when they are wholly His they will be more themselves than ever.”

- C.S. Lewis