“How are you doing?” she asked. “I’m fine,” I replied. But, I wasn’t fine, and afterward, I realized I was simply giving a standard answer. After all, as Shauna Niequist said, “I’ve been training all my life to pretend I’m fine.” In hindsight, I should have said, “Actually, I’m fine, but only if being fine…
The first house we owned was a 1950’s three-bedroom, one-bath, nine hundred square foot home that needed some love. And we loved that home for almost ten years. During the time we lived in that house, we replaced siding and windows, cemented a gravel driveway, and rebuilt the bathroom from the studs up. We did…
My musings these days have been swirling around a question of enough and my pursuit of its answer. When did enough stop being enough? It seems as if there is never enough for us to be content, yet if you look at the bigger picture, there is often more than enough to meet our needs….
While we have only now fully emerged into spring, I am already finding myself preparing for summer activities and making decisions about our schedules for fall. I’m not sure how we got here so quickly. When the boys were little, I loved planning for summers. I would make summer binders with printed calendars and space…
The cultural pendulum swings hard in one direction and then quickly reverses, changing everyone’s course. One minute we are to chase our dreams believing we can do anything, and the next, we are encouraged to slow down, to rest. In the shift from one direction to another, we can label certain types of success or…
The previous owner of the home we now live in was a master gardener. The backyard was beautifully landscaped, including a butterfly garden and a plot for a vegetable garden. I was so excited to have a space for gardening. However, it didn’t take long after moving in to realize that it required a lot…
