The snow is only meant, created, commanded to fall. The rain is only meant, created, commanded to pour down. You were only meant, created, commanded to be who you are, weird and wonderful, imperfect and messy and lovely. What.
This is what I’ve come to believe about change: it’s good, in the way that childbirth is good, and heartbreak is good, and failure is good. By that I mean that it’s incredibly painful, exponentially more so if you fight it, and also that it has the potential to open you up, to open life up, to deliver you right into the palm of God’s hand, which is where you wanted to be all along, except that you were too busy pushing and pulling your life into exactly what you thought it should be.
What makes me feel alive and connected to God’s voice and spirit in this world is creating opportunities for the people I love to rest and connect and be fed at my table. I believe it’s the way I was made, and I believe it matters. For many years, I didn’t let it matter, for a whole constellation of reasons, but part of becoming yourself, in a deeply spiritual way, is finding the words to tell the truth about what it is you really love.
I didn’t ask you to become new and improved today. That wasn’t the goal. You were broken down and strange yesterday, and you still are today, and the only one freaked out about it is you.
The very thing that makes you you, that makes you great, that makes you different from everyone else is also the thing that, unchecked, will ruin you.
Part of the magic of the lake is that it isn’t home – it’s away, and away allows us to see the rhythms and dimensions of our lives more clearly. So it doesn’t necessarily work for us to live here at the lake, but I do want the way of living that I’ve tasted here to inform and ground how I live everywhere, all year long. The lake gives me something to aspire to – a reminder, a rhythm, a pattern. Simple, connected to God and His world and people, uncomplicated by lots of stuff.
Because there really is nothing like good friends, like the sounds of their laughter and the tones of their voices and the things they teach us in the quietest, smallest moments.
Now I know that the best thing I can offer to this world is not my force or energy, but a well-tended spirit, a wise and brave soul.
Maybe it is God calling a big cosmic time out on me; giving me a chance at a new way of living. This is what I know. I have always been a more is more person and something shifted in me this summer. Something inside me said, “No more!” No more pushing and rushing. No more cold pizza at midnight. No more flights. No more books. No more house-guests. No more all of these things. Even things I love. Things I long for. Things that make me happy. No More. Only less. Less of everything.
Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path.
For some of us, the addiction to motion is so deep, so pervasive, that only dramatic gestures are enough to take hold.
You are more than dust and bones. You are spirit and power and image of God. And you have been given Today.
Recipes are how we learn all the rules, and cooking is knowing how to break them to suit our tastes or preferences.
I know that life is busy and hard, and that there’s crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don’t. Please don’t. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader, because of the art that you make.
Try to keep your soul always in peace and quiet, always ready for whatever our Lord may wish to work in you. It is certainly a higher virtue of the soul, and a greater grace, to be able to enjoy the Lord in different times and different places than in only one. – Ignatius of Loyola.
Be very careful that you are not giving yourself to a pale imitation of life with Christ – life about Christ, or life generally near to Christ.
I’m learning that both body and soul require more tenderness and attentiveness than I had imagined.
I fake-rested instead of real-rested, and then I found that I was real-tired. It feels ludicrous to be a grown woman, a mother, still learning how to rest. But here I am, baby-stepping to learn something kids know intuitively. Part of being an adult is taking responsibility for resting your body and your soul. And part of being an adult is learning to meet your own needs, because when it comes down to it, with a few exceptions, no one else is going to do it for you.
It has come to me with a fight. It has come to me the hard way, through tears and fog and fear and chaos, and now has landed in the palm of my hand like a firefly. There now, I have had my vision.
Life with God at its core is about giving your life up to something bigger and more powerful. It’s about saying at every turn that God knows better than we know, and that his Spirit will lead us in ways that we couldn’t have predicted. I have known that, but I haven’t really lived that.