I am more out than in with the blog these days it seems. For the first time since right after I started blogging, I am feeling an odd reticence when I sit before the keys. But this time it is not the quandaries over showing my kids' faces, or how much to reveal about our hometown. It has more to do with how much of the real stuff I heap on a platter and bring to the table versus how much I keep here. Not just for myself, but for fuller conversations and deeper relationships that honor the topics with context, time and grace.
I don't want to write here about the political candidate I am supporting this year, though I am a passionate armchair pundit, because I fear a box-- "oh, she is one of those sorts of people!" more or less committed to one thing or another than the reader imagined. A mark of our times, to look for those boxes into which to file each other-- I do it too.
I have a certain impatience toward writing about parenting-- I have not been at the top of my game lately, and I don't mind revealing that-- I just have the misgiving that I should be doing it more and pontificating less. Actually, that speaks to a general impatience I am feeling with myself-- a "just do it!!!" It is lovely, most of the time, to care for our home, so I guess I am in a season of just reveling in it more and reflecting on it less.
Perhaps this blog has had its season for me. I'm not sure. John and I chuckle often over the generation gap we feel between ourselves and some of his younger coworkers. The world online still seems utterly other to us-- we are somewhat crotchety and insecure in it. Real connections are made here and I don't discount them-- the hearts and minds that bless and nurture me pulse and beat in real bodies and real hands convey their thoughts.
But for me, when I feel unsteady, or as though my footing in the here is not what it should be, this world is the first thing to be placed, gently but firmly, on some back burner
Perhaps I will return to this space at some point. Until then I encourage you to seek and find the beauty and grace in every day.
Yesterday the mountain was icy blue, school was closed, kids were up early for a cup of hot chocolate, fingers itching to pack the first snowball. Do you remember that feeling-- even if you loved school-- that breath-held, if-only, can-it-be-true wait to find out if school was canceled? In this part of the South, it doesn't even happen every year, and when it does, most often for ice storms that slick the streets and leave us, power out, scurrying for candles and more polarfleece.
This was a real snowfall, by our standards. It began as darkness fell Wednesday night. We were at church, and I looked out of the 2s and 3s room to see Sam's class, noses pressed against the windows, erupt into squealing in the hallway, squinting up toward the streetlights to see the first flakes coming down.
It was still snowing at daybreak, for a little while before changing to rain, and we played outside early, to make the most of it. And the rest of the stay was spent inside in the warmth. I had the blessing of contrast-- we are planning our first "real" garden, so I could drown in pictures and descriptions of flowers and produce, or read the helps and hopes in this book, but glance up to see white lacy branches and the far red cardinal who stopped for a snack. A little bit between the now and the not yet.
I've been greeting the new year is typical fashion this week. The laundry basket and Goodwill bag, they runneth over. A menu plan is neatly printed on the first page of a new planner. I've sweated my way through workouts on three of the four days of this new year. The house is swept clean of holiday decorations and the sun shines in with chill brightness of bare floors and plumped pillows.
I loved the holidays, the extra family time and the celebration and feasting and fun. But this is good too-- like a deep breath of the coldest air this winter has seen yet. A kind of comfort that I already know the novelty of some of my virtues will wear off long before Valentines Day. But some might stick, might become part of my becoming this new year.
What are your hopes for 2008, your intentions and dreams? Would you like to learn something new, read some great words, learn to hold your tongue or let go of your agenda? Let us remember to balanced self-denial and abundance. ( A little less chocolate but all the library books you can carry? ) Let us step into His Hand, and see what He has in store-- both for us and in the making of us.
