Dear Reade,

I've been gone from this blog space for a long time. I can't say what shifts bring me in and out again, but I am here now.

The last ... five months have brought some pretty big changes to our family and our house. Girlie speaks dependent clauses in a sentence now: When I get into the bath I wash my feet. And she asks for things using the construction "Pease I have..." The Boy is shooting up in height like the perennials in the garden seemingly tiny one moment and then there in fullness. He's making shifts as he learns about obedience -- not harsh, forced external obedience, but an obedience that allows him to be himself. Settled, bright, and relational.

And I've been packing, sorting, cleaning, shifting and letting go of so many things and ideas. After these many years of hoping I would get to sewing and quilting projects (Yes, she without a functioning sewing machine) I've let go of those piles of saved up clothes and cloth. Someday I'd like to enter that world again but for now being released from the ongoing expectations is so freeing. Even to have given you the garden feels freeing.

Each night as we do bedtime with the kids we say these words, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..." Depending on the translation "I shall not want" is also "I have everything I need." Except I have been living in this space as though I need to keep a stockpile of everything I might need. A stockpile of things to do to keep me distracted. My reserves of things -- to do, to be, to become -- have taken up so much mental, emotional, psychological and physical space. I don't want the space for it's own sake but for the freedom to become my truest self.

Kathleen Norris in her book Acedia and Me says:

Perform the humblest of tasks with full attention and no fussing over the whys and wherefores....To dwell in this desert and make it bloom requires that we indulge neither guilt nor vainglorious fantasizing but struggle to know ourselves as we are.

There are echos in that of these lines I have loved from Buechner:

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.

I don't want "stuff" to get in the way of attending to the realities of my life, our life together, our lives with our family and friends. We are blessed beyond words. We have everything we need. We lie down in green pastures. We rest beside quiet waters.

Thanks be to God.

And, I do love you.

Love, Jenn