bsmiles and sunny days

  We have been dreaming of moving to the country for years. Each time we spent a weekend with family or friends out in the wide open spaces, we would scour the market for our dream house, make plans to fix up the broken places inside our walls, and make a run at moving out. Most recently I’ve felt feverish about it, knowing that we will have to sell our house before we can put an offer on a new one, since houses are selling almost as soon as they are listed.  After spending several hours last night shopping for light fixtures, I woke up early this morning feeling pressed to pray for our country. Everything has felt so volatile, and things are shifting so quickly, I felt overwhelmed and almost fearful of what may come. I quickly sent Dale a message to say that I was having second thoughts about selling, and maybe we ought to just stay put.  I’ve told my children, over and over, that God carefully placed this dream in each of our hearts, and He will bring it to pass in His ...

I’ve been baking bread. And it’s not just any old bread, it’s sourdough. Beautiful, crusty, artisan sourdough. I feed it and tend it and nurture it and stretch it and wrap it up in a little blankey, and then send it into the hot oven for its final destiny. I’m smitten with the whole process. The hardest part is the waiting. You mix it up and wait. Then you add a few things and mix it up again and wait. Then then you stretch it out and tuck it back in and wait. After you do that four times, you give it a bulk rise, which is just a technical bakers term for waiting a very long time. That’s not the end of the waiting either. You have another wait after it goes into the pan, and then, of course the bake time. After that, surprise surprise, you have to wait while it cools for a full hour. It’s a lot of hurry up and wait, but man, oh man, is it worth it!  I’ve been living my whole life inside the lines of this process, and I’ve never been able to articulate it until this very day. We liv...

  When I was in the sixth grade, our class was given an assignment in responsibility. The teacher assigned each student a “spouse” and gave the couple a raw egg to “parent”. Our job was to work together to keep the baby alive through the weekend. My partner took our egg my tossed it into the air as soon as he got his hands on it, so I took the baby, made it a paper box to sleep in and covered it with a tissue. I carried that egg from place to place, tending to it like it was alive. When I returned to school on Monday, the teacher collected all the eggs and tossed them into the waste-paper basket. I was crushed, but that moment solidified a dream in my heart to have a family of my own. By my 25th birthday, I was married and had 3 small children with another little bundle on the way. We were a mess, but I was living my dream. Our 9th baby was born 13 years later. By that time I was falling apart. We were 11 people under one roof with 4 teenagers, 2 grade schoolers, 2 toddlers and a n...

This perspective doesn’t mean anything to you if you’ve never been inside these walls. But for anyone who has had the privilege of being in this room with these people and the network of people that comes in and out the front door, you get it. You saw this photo and knew right where I was sitting. It is very likely that your heart ached a little be in this spot, drinking coffee, scrolling casually on your phone and laughing spontaneously at something random that was said nearby. It’s my mom and dad’s house. I grew up here. I wrestled for identity here. I found my joy in Jesus here, and then I moved away. I was ready to go, but no one warned me that it would be impossible to recreate this. When I left, I started over at the beginning. I had my heritage to build onto, but even that would need to be cut and fitted to lock into my husband’s heritage. That is a long and difficult process all it’s own. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes forgiveness. It takes consistency. My home is a...

This week we started Christmas break, so this morning I did my usual route and didn't have to hurry up and get busy when I got home. I took a nap, had some lunch, and then sat at the table and talked to my dreamy husband about stuff and nothing. We're sitting in our chairs now reading and praying and watching the sun begin to set.  My life doesn't seem incredibly busy, but when I have a day that doesn't require a lot of me, I don't quite know what to do with myself. Getting up to drive at 3am scrambles my brain for the remainder of the day, too, so that could be part of it. But I am grateful for some time to sit and do nothing. It's a rare commodity. It's December 22nd, and the kids have been jumping on the trampoline for hours. It's 60 degrees. I'll never understand this crazy Missouri weather. The long fall and slow, erratic freezes have made it hard for the fruit flies to go under, so we have fly paper hanging in our kitchen. I hate it, but it thr...

There’s a little green Charlie Brown Christmas clock that hangs in my kitchen and plays tiny tinkling Christmas carols every hour during the Christmas season. I usually take it down and remove the batteries for storage every year on December 26th. By that time I’ve usually had my fill of Christmas and all it’s offerings, and I’m ready to tuck it away with the new sweet memories of the year. This time I left it up for two full weeks after we stopped officially celebrating the holiday. It kept filling my sail with the hope of Jesus every time the hour arrived as it played Oh Come Let Us Adore Him or We Will You a Merry Christmas in its tiny splendor. I was having trouble letting it go. With that, all of my Christmas decor stayed drooping from two long months of duty. The noise of its clutter left me aching for clean spaces, but the representation of the incarnation held me fast. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I baked bread instead. Finally, in a burst of determination, I took ...