glimpses of joy – Page 4 – Glimpses of Joy

school’s out

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One. Chris finished finals and we did our 2018 inaugural beach trip! Grandma got the girls super cute suits. We found a playground and had a chill time. Evangeline had fun running in and out of the very cold water until she fell over and got soaked and that was the end of that. Zelie was content climbing on Chris and eating sticks and being just way too stinking cute.

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Two. Chris’s roommate and best man from Stanford has been staying with us for the last week and a half. For Chris, it’s meant a buddy to watch the playoffs with. For me, it’s been a taste of living in community and I’m reminded that I like it. It’s nice having someone else with us for dinner and to play with the girls (and Kevin does the dishes while we do bedtime – praise!) We’re planning to rent a room to one of Chris’s fellow M.Div’s next year and I’m looking forward to that more now.

Three. Kevin got us tickets to Hamilton! I think as a thank you for letting him stay? Setting the bar high for future guests! JK, JK. JOKES. But it was awesome. Even the phenomenon that is Hamilton aside, I was struck by how amazing live performances are. We were asked (ushers yelled at people during the first song) to put our phones away and just sit and enjoy being present to these men and women who are brilliant at their craft. Refreshing. And a treat for me to be away from the girls and in Chicago for a day. I’m super grateful to my friends who watched them – when Kevin first told us he wanted to buy tix I thought, there’s no way we can go, but I asked anyway and ROSE AND KATHERINE ARE THE BOMB. #FRIENDSHIP

Four. I’m reading this and I see a lot of my own conversion story in his, and he reminds me of a lot of my friends. It got me working on a post on my conversion, which is fun to write, but still in my drafts.

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Five. My friend Julia requested that our local library buy this new book that we both want to read (didn’t know you could do that!) and I’m next in line when she’s done. I spent some time journaling through a free ebook of Jennifer Fulwiler’s called A Guide to Your Gifts and it was so great. Her new book is about pursuing your passions while having a family and I was like, hm, I love the sound of that, but … what are my passions again? (Classic Enneagram 9, lol). So, this ebook was great for that and it got me all fired up. I have passions to pursue! I want to write a book! I want to get better at handlettering! I want to change the world! And then I felt like I kind of hit a wall. (I want to learn how to edit photos of my handlettering, but Photoshop/Illustrator/Whatever is so expensive! If you know how to do this for free, can you tell me how?) But I took a small step and committed to write each day for one week, not blogging, but seeing what came out (it was mostly poems). I missed some days and don’t know if I even made it a whole week, but it was something! Finding community with writing is something I would really love … waiting for that.

Six. One of the questions in that ebook was, “who are you jealous of?” Because we’re often jealous of people we see fully living out their gifts. And it got me thinking, man, IG often feeds my jealously/envy. And envy is the least fun sin. If you have any tips on combatting that, please share. I usually want to throw my phone away until I have a cute pic to post, which is terrible.

Seven. Inspired by Sarah and also Julia telling me that they can survive the winter here, I think I’m thinking about backyard chickens?? Part of me is like, ugh, chickens are gross. And the other part is like, we have this giant backyard, why not jump on that homesteading bandwagon and learn a lot and get some eggs out of it? #LAURAINGALLSWILDER4EVA #livingthedream

But, we shall see. Maybe I’ll wait til next spring. Oh and the seeds in our garden are growing!! So cool.

Happy Weekend!

Linking up with This Ain’t The Lyceum.

what i want to remember from right now

Ice skating with Evangeline for the first time. The tiny skates! She loved getting pushed around in that little green thing, as fast as we could go.

Evange learning to hold up two fingers by herself. And just randomly I find her holding two fingers, like she’s always practicing. She says, “Zelie is going to be one years old and I’m two years old!” So proud of herself. And very excited for Zelie’s birthday party. I hope I can make it live up to the hype.
Zelie crawling – determined, head down, super fast. flopping down onto the couch or pillows like a little bug. putting every dang little scrap of paper/anything she’s not supposed to eat into her mouth ALL THE TIME. (And she’s sleeping terribly. But maybe I want to forget that.)
Zelie making friends all the time. Getting to be pretty interactive – grabbing faces and hair and just so smiley. Kids love her.
The girls starting to play with each other.

Evange on a The Polar Express KICK, in March. Grandma and Grandpa visited and she made Grandma read it to her at least 10 times. And she needs to wear her “Santa Claw” hat while she reads. Love this girl.

Our little apartment at University Village. We’re moving to our first house soon and leaving apartment life, especially in the Village, is bittersweet.

one week of Lent (or, what I can’t Instagram)

1. I CANNOT WAIT FOR WARM WEATHER. This impatience is manifesting itself in various ways, the primary ones in the past week: new, sudden interest in gardening, and online shopping for summer shoes.

2. I’m still trying to fully enter into Lent. Saw this quote and I don’t fully understand it, but it resonates. Giving up IG, I had hopes for using that time better, but it’s a strug fest. I find I keep checking my email compulsively, and no one emails me except Gap and J.Crew, so…. see point #1.

3. Fridays are the best. I finally figured out where to park for the free babysitting on campus. They only take kids two and older, but God sent another Adrianna into my life who loves my babies, so I am child free for 1-3 hours and it is glorious. I swipe my spouse ID and get in a work out at the brand new gym on campus (which is GINORMOUS) and feel like the red dress lady emoji. And I usually get to see Chris too, either for lunch or for mass, and that’s a nice treat in and of itself. La dee dee.

4. Knowing I’m going to exercise around undergrads has made me exercise more leading up to Fridays. Fitness Blender is my new jam. It’s free and easy! I can do a 15 minute HIIT in my tiny living room. No excuses. It is hilarious, though, when I try to do it with the girls awake. I wish I could video it somehow. I’m doing planks and push ups with Evange on my back and Zelie standing, holding onto my shoulders. And squats, onto Evange’s head. But, fitness!

5. Minerva, our amaryllis, gifted from Molly’s wonderful mother, Mary Jean, and the Dr. Burr Field Scholarship Fund, is a joy. We opened the box she came in on February 13, the day before Ash Wednesday, and I thought I had killed her by waiting too long to check the mail. She was all white and dead-ish looking. But she is thriving! Literally growing before our eyes. Every day one of us comments, “Look, Minerva is getting so tall!” Evangeline is very curious what color flower she will produce. It’s nice to have a living plant in the apartment in this eternal winter.

6. I finished The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott – enjoyed it. Good writing. Something slightly strange at the very end left me with weird feeling about it, but overall, good. I’ve been almost done with A Severe Mercy for several days, just need to finish it off. A good one, too. I recommend. Especially enjoyed getting to know C.S. Lewis better through the letter he exchanges with the author. And on that note, I read his essay, The Weight of Glory, this week. Chris read it for something and lent it to me. “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal … Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses.” Oh, Clive. Zeitoun by Dave Eggers is next on the list.

7. The other night, Evangeline organized a little dance party. She found a silly hat for each of us, including Zelie, and played music out of this toy barn she has. She is very particular and a bit bossy, and I love it. (Most of the time.) There’s been several moments lately when I’ve thought, “Wow, you can do that by yourself now?” She’s getting to be a big girl. Pancakes are her favorite food to make and eat, and she eats more of them than Chris does.

It was 60 degrees and we played in the pouring rain for an hour. (Pretending it’s spring). What a cutie bug.

the glimpses

There was a day back in December when I got out of the apartment for a run (in sunshine, hallelujah!) and as I was running along the walking path toward campus, I saw a woman with a basket. She was off the path a ways, standing at the edge of a field that was filled with yellow flowers when we moved here in July, but now is brown. I had just registered that the field had died and never looked at it again, really. But she was standing there with a basket, picking what I now saw were thistles. Still brown and dead, but she had noticed them for some reason, and her attention turned mine. I kept running but on my way back, when I passed that spot again, I decided to take a closer look. They were definitely dead. Pointy thistles on the end of dry, pointy stalks. But they were pretty, in a way, and there were small, brittle flowers among them. And I was struck mostly that I had never seen them before in all my times walking/jogging past. So I copied the basket lady and broke off several stalks, walking the rest of the way home.

It was a strange, reflective moment, where I was very aware that I had done something I hadn’t planned to do (step off the path, stop my run, bring home dead flowers) and I was super elated by it. Like, weirdly so. Chris had taken the girls somewhere so I had the apartment to myself for a few minutes, and I spent the time carefully arranging the thistles in a glass. And it was so great. And they were just dead flowers.

***

I think I’m entering a season of collecting things like this. Not always dead thistles, sometimes a line from a poem, a writing by a saint, or an old photograph from a thrift store. Things or words that set my soul humming. It only now occurs to me that this quiet, small activity fits well with winter. I’ve been turning inward as the days have shortened, the leaves have let go and fallen, and the bitter cold is now setting in. I am watching the sun rise and set each day now, and it has set me to paying attention to more of the little things that fill that time in between.

This quote by Henri Nouwen that I found in this book is something I keep returning to, lately. “My deepest vocation is to be a witness to the glimpses of God I have been allowed to catch.” Seeing these things I’m collecting as glimpses – of God, of beauty, of joy – and savoring them. I’m wondering how to be a witness to them. And how being a witness can be my vocation, within my other vocations (wife, mother). It’s all wrapped up in the question I continue to have: What do I do as a stay at home mom? But I think this sort of vocational lens is more helpful to me. It’s not fully formed and I’m still figuring it out, but I know I want to keep catching those glimpses.