a favs post // winter
Thought it was time
for a little sharing of favs
I’m come across—
from moments to books,
to what I’m reading or into and thinking about.
Hope you are continuing
the celebration of Valentine’s this week—
with the beauty of relationships
no matter the quality,
and that we are held
in the Greatest Valentine Story
of all.
xx
Some favorite moments over the last couple of weeks—from eating at my son’s table together, to a family day in the mountains, from a walk around a lake (just this morning), to an inspiring window…and to a little celebration portrait Jonathan took as we celebrated being out of (what would become a ten-month) window of waiting to be cancer-free after my awkward and tragic loss of a twin pregnancy last April.
Our favorite winter stories this season (though I know spring is upon us!):
In this season where my days are full with a curious toddler, exploring life with him, letting a child be my guide, and a little babe be a source of wonder—I am exploring life with a babe and relearning, re-searching joy that comes through a death of self in Christ. I’m finding motherhood to be a perfect place for me to live from a fullness not accessible to me, but from and in an abundance given.
My dishwasher broke this week, we’re on a special diet where I cook things (and make all things like almond butter or yogurt), and I was solo-parenting. And it was beautiful! I’m learning to make everything a song (spiritual—and in reality, ‘Mamma, sing the yogurt song…!’). I am dancing that practice of learning, a re(learning). Is (Christian) spirituality a practice or rather a going under to come back into being (just now completely different)?
Who am I to be talking about this? All around me, I see ways. Are they His? Or is there a Way to Living where Life blossoms, flourishes, where creativity comes through the graces (and the showing up—and by that I mean allowing myself to forgive, to die to my ways, to let Another Way flow through me, sustain me, be me in my own uniqueness, let me play), where all of a sudden, the work of life is actually a delight, not a burden. A joy, not a sorrow. A worship, not a warship.
I’ve been discerning more of my dissertation and delighted that it is burgeoning forth into a memoir expanded from ‘methodologies’ — learnings—that have arisen and that I’m listening to. Lessons about loss, learnings about spirituality, examinations into where joy is found—and how this is all in the context of marriage, played out in how I mother, rooted in my story. Or rather…that book on joy I’ve been writing for a while (eh hem…learning how to live first…) is, at the encouragement of my professors, becoming my dissertation.
I had initially dismissed this idea about a year ago—“no no, this book of mine on joy…it can’t be dry, can’t be academic, can’t be (whatever I thought the style and tone of a dissertation was to be about)”. But this program is beautiful, life being birthed and burgeoning forth into the spaces where breath and form, movement, and being take shape and newness reveals what has always been known—just in new ways and possibly, in new forms for the first time. That narrative has power, is a place of knowing, is a place of learning, a place of re-searching the possibilities for and the realities of life. And don’t we know knowledge from a life that was birthed? From a babe, from our babe, from a Babe that teaches us about new explosive, unimagined, re-imagined possibilities of life?
At night, when I crawl into bed after a long day that usually starts anytime between 4:30am and 6am (lately, 6am because I can’t get up earlier to work at the moment), I snuggle up with a book before drifting off to sleep. I’ve been loving Amazing Grace by Kathleen Norris. A few weeks ago, when I had a couple of hours for research—I decided to look up the word ‘grace’ (my theme-word for the year actually)—and this book by her came up. The short, brief chapters relay her understanding of previously inaccessible religious words & jargon from within the Christian tradition. She writes this after finding her faith again from a hardship in life. Reading the book is like sipping good tea—organic nuances arising from an embodied experience on the page—no dryness found in these theological territories. The length of the chapters are just right—enough to ponder on as I slip into sleep.
Signing off from a cafe where the name translated means “much”.
Love,
Jessica