Archives for 2023

another feather in his cap: Joe’s first marathon

March 6, 2023

On December 10, 2022, our brother Joe ran his first marathon! He casually threw this accomplishment into the mix of an already busy and stressful, highly textured, and wildly successful life. Joe is Commander and Public Works Officer for the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command in Rota, Spain. He and his wife Halee, the green eyed, raven haired sister our blonde, brown eyed crew gained by marriage, have been globetrotting for all of their two decades long marriage. They have been busy raising their two boys in so many amazing places our Navy has seen fit to send them.

Halee and Joe at the Seabee Ball in Spain, March 2023…xoxo

Active in various athletic pursuits all his life, Joe is not exclusively a runner; but he certainly has the discipline for long term, hard training. He has ran at least two half marathons, one in Spain (a year ago, the same event as the full he just completed) and one before, while stationed in Virginia. Both were successful.

For the Virginia half he followed the famously difficult Hansons training plan. During those months he and I commiserated quite a bit, as I was dabbling with Hansons then, too. We learned together along the way, though living many states apart, and traded weird details about daily life that mostly only runners would care about. I was so inspired by his strong finish and adherence to that plan! I clearly remember one conversation in review of Hansons when my younger and more stoic brother pointed out that the only way to honestly evaluate a training plan is to stick to it scrupulously, to give it your best and most honest effort. Otherwise, how can you say it was the plan that either passed or failed?

For this last training block, Joe flew much more under the radar. Not a single announcement on Facebook about his paces or goal or inspired reason for running, no Babe Ruth homerun declarations, nothing. That autumn I noticed his Garmin activities building volume and suspected he had something up his sleeve, but Joe has this aura of mystery about him, like a wild (if highly disciplined) horse who doesn’t want to be caught, so I resisted the urge to ask anything directly. I just made a few oblique comments here and there and secretly used the Law of Attraction to get him to open up. Finally he messaged me very casually about having signed up for his first marathon. Wahoo!! From that moment on I stalked his workouts like a weirdo and coordinated our far flung family to surprise him with something fun on race day, since he was halfway around the globe and we couldn’t be there with posters, cowbells, and refreshments (more on this remote surprise soon).

Watching Joe’s fitness build during those weeks was both motivating and humbling, because I have at least a glancing idea of how much other responsibility he carries in life. Anyone who trains for a marathon knows that those few hours on race day are a drop in the bucket compared to the months of time and energy spent preparing. Training never happens in a vacuum.

Anyway, suffice it to say, I love my brother so much. We have been mistaken for twins several times, and I always take it as a compliment.

We forgot which of us was which in this history making face swap.

But if were twins, I know he would be the smarter (and faster) one. I would be the one slightly better at gardening and diagramming sentences, possibly baking. He is an inspiration to me in a hundred ways, and I feel so happy that we share a love of running and a sincere curiosity about the art and science of marathoning.

After his race, in fact after the holidays, I got him to agree to a short interview to indulge all of my curiosities. What a fun thrill for me to finally share this story, in his words! Enjoy!!

Joe and his first born son, our nephew Greg, approaching the finish line!!
What a cool moment to share with each other xoxo

1. When did you decide to train for a marathon, and was there an event or moment that inspired you? Is this a basket list thing? I won’t claim it was a lifelong goal, but after having run a few half marathons, I felt it was inevitable, I just didn’t know when. I didn’t do any real structured training from 2020 into 2021, but then ran a half that December with only moderate training. The course was flat and weather was mild. So when the race organizers emailed out reminders the following spring (2022), I decided to go for the full this time somewhat on a whim. That gave me more than six months to prep, which seemed doable.

2. You used a very different training program than you used for your half in Virginia. Tell me why you chose a different plan, how they compared, etc. If you run another full, will you prepare the same way, go back to Hansons, or something else? I knew I couldn’t dedicate six days per week to a program this time. I had other commitments and desires, including military group PT (physical training) a couple times per week, a personal desire to lift weights, and a full plate otherwise. So I chose a plan that included only four days per week. It was one step above one of the real first-timer plans, but not much. If I decide to run another full, I would like to improve, so I think going back to the Hanson method is a good likelihood as it does seem like an effective method. Which means I will need to have the time and (mental) energy to do a plan like that!

3. What did you do for cross training? Were you running paces at current fitness or beyond (how did you set your goal)? I went to a group workout 1-2 times per week as part of my duties, which sometimes was a short run (usually 3 mi., which I’d substitute into my plan), or a body weight circuit, or even team sports. As I got into the last 8-ish weeks, I would opt out more often to save myself for the long runs and to recover more. I also tried to lift weights a couple times per week. Similarly, I stopped that in the last 4-6 weeks. My running was mostly pretty slow. 1-2 minutes per mile slower than my goal. That usually allowed an easy recovery. Looking back, I can see how much my sleep pattern wasn’t ideal. Mostly 5-6 hrs per night. I know better now. Maybe. I set my goal somewhat arbitrarily. I thought a 4-hr marathon would be an awesome baseline, and it’s a time you often see as a benchmark goal for amateurs, so I did the math and figured out that’s about a 9-min pace. A little slower actually. I’ve run sub-8 pace half marathons, so even though I wasn’t in that shape then, I thought it was achievable. Now I know that was too ambitious, or that I would have needed to pick a more aggressive training plan to have gotten there.

4. Did your training block go as expected or as planned? Tell me about any significant hiccups. Tell me about any pleasant surprises, too. Tell me how your confidence and motivation fluctuated as training progressed. Overall, it went relatively smoothly. No major hiccups. Looking back, maybe I took it too easy. I did get sick for a few days a couple times in the second half and had to adapt the plan. I missed a few runs, including a 13-mi long run. But that was actually a step down week, sandwiched between 18 and 19 mi long runs, so I thought it wasn’t a worst case scenario. The only on-road hiccup I recall was during my longest training run, a 20 miler three weeks before the race. The 19 mi run had gone well and was a confidence booster, but I was sick again a couple days later, so I missed 1 or 2 shorter runs. I felt mostly better by the weekend, and ran the 20-miler just a couple days late. In the last few miles of that run, my digestive track really started throwing a fit. I was searching for concealment and hopefully a discarded cloth to clean up just in case. Fortunately, that wasn’t necessary and after a few minutes pause I was able to shuffle home the last couple miles. That’s when I started my 3-wk taper, not exactly on a high. Probably wasn’t fully recovered from being sick.

5. I know your race day was cold and rainy. How was the weather as you trained, overall? Did the weather in Spain change much over those weeks? I picked this race partially because of the weather. December (and fall in general) is mild in southern Spain. I knew it should be in the 50s on race day, which was about reality. The rain was always a possibility, but of course I was hoping for dry. Rain definitely makes your shirt and shoes heavy. I fared well through it, but I did get a couple of blisters on my feet late in the course, which took over a month to fully heal. My training plan had started in late July, so I went from running in the 70s to the 50s (I ran in the early morning 99% of the time). Very easy place to run year round. Very small percentage of time you can blame the weather for not training, so you have to get creative with your excuses!

6. Who was your training partner, and how did their marathon experience compare? I ran solo pretty much the entire training plan, but had signed up for the race with a Navy buddy, Chris, who had done the same half in 2021 with me. He’s a talented runner that generally just wings it (my perception of course, but I know he doesn’t follow a rigid plan). Chris has run a few marathons and is pretty consistent year round. So he ramped up for the race and crushed it. Well under his stated 4-hour goal (sub 3:40), pretty sure a PR for him. He’s also modest, so he may not have admitted his target out loud. By complete coincidence, another Navy friend, Ben, was deployed here and ran the marathon as well. Ben is an even more experienced runner who has run countless marathons, definitely in the low 3s, likely has a sub 3 under his belt. But more importantly, he also ran my first half marathon with me back in 2004; another chilly rainy race. We never saw each other on the course, but it was a cool happenstance.

7. What was your race day breakfast, what shoes did you wear, and what was your post race meal? Breakfast was coffee, two pieces of bread (no toaster in the hotel) with peanut butter and a banana. Very close to my pre-long-run meals. I ran in Altra Provision 5. Post race, we went to a local restaurant/brewery… I don’t remember what I ordered, maybe a burger? But I do remember we had quite a feast before getting on the road to drive home. I was a little worried about sitting in the back seat with two 12-yr olds for three hours. But I survived. The adults agreed that we’d stop to stretch out if needed. Never had to after all.

Joe and Greg in Malaga, Spain, for race weekend…xoxo

Their hotel boasted a hot tub that was not heated, ha!
This would have made for better recovery than pre-race relaxation.

8. Did you know that Greg was going to cross the finish line with you? What was that moment like? It was very cool to see Greg at the finish and I loved that he wanted to do that. Didn’t know if I’d see him at all. Since Halee wasn’t able to come, Greg was hanging out with Chris’s wife and son (TJ and Isaac, one of our social circle’s staple families here in Spain). And due to the rain, it was unpredictable how much time they’d be spending road-side.

9. How was your physical recovery? To say I was spent is an understatement. I guess you could say I hit the wall during the race. Felt great through 17 or 18 miles, then digressed and had to force myself to finish. So I didn’t run at all for a couple weeks. The first week was just true rest/recovery, which was needed and effective. Then we had our holiday vacation to London the next weekend. So lot’s of walking in London for four or five days, but still no running. Got in a handful of runs starting in late December into January, but have mostly started focusing on lifting weights again. I thought I’d stick to three days of running per week as an ”off-season,” but haven’t got that rhythm going yet.

10. When is your next marathon, and can it be with me? : ) Soon as I realized I wouldn’t meet my goal, I started wondering if I’d “need” to do another one, or if I was going to be happy with having just survived one. Before the race, I even had thoughts that I might enjoy ultra training more. I do enjoy the long slow runs. But marathon training is a serious time commitment, where the long runs become a big part of every weekend. So with our move back to the States on the horizon, I don’t have any races in mind. I could see myself doing a couple more half marathons first. There are tons of races in the DC area and nearby, so I know there will be plenty of opportunity to develop a strategy, and lots of places to explore, potentially on long runs! I imagine I’ll do another full someday and would love to do it together! Maybe we can make it a destination race, or just have you out to DC for a race out there. The Marine Corps marathon is a big one that we may have to consider…

Thank you, brother, for sharing your marathon experience with us! You did a phenomenal job, and you managed to make it a family memory too. I love you, I am so happy for you, and I miss you like crazy. I am already scheming ways to get to the east coast once you relocate, so we can race MCM together.

XOXOXOXO

we’re not perfect, but do we deserve THIS?

March 3, 2023

As unsavory as this feels to write, it’s such a big headline in our lives that I can’t not write it.

We are in a season of endurance again. More accurately, we are layering up more crises and more heartbreak upon old crises and heartbreaks that still want answers. New grief is raining down on a land already saturated with grief that seems to have no way to drain. We are drowning. Are you too?

And the prevailing outcry seems to be, why? Why do we find ourselves in such a pattern of false accusation and turmoil wrought by liars and abusive power wielding egomaniacs?

From the people who hurt our children all those years to politicians and reporters (I will not pay the compliment of using the word journalist) who make false accusations, create hostile work environments, and perpetuate false narratives, I am stunned by the growing number of people who are happy to spread darkness.

These are hardly new themes, and we are hardly the first people to suffer false accusations and undue loss. History is thick with abuse, backwards storytelling, deep grief, and bizarre turns of events. So, yes. I have some perspective and I hate to whine.

But to us, in our marriage and our little life in Oklahoma, these things are personal and they are changing the trajectory of everything.

Or, they could.

We choose to not allow it.

We choose to affirm our trust in God, that truth has a way of making itself known. That light drives out darkness. That mercy is real, and we know we are hardly perfect but also not remotely guilty of the things being said. Not then, and not now. The noise can be disorienting, but it cannot convince us of a lie.

We also know the people saying these things are, actually, guilty of their own words and much more. It’s almost unbelievable. So, know that the word abuse is used neither lightly nor vaguely. We already know the truth. For now we choose to stay quiet, having put specific people in God’s hands.

The idea of deserving a thing, good or bad, is so messy. In our culture we are pretty hyped up about justice, which is great and fine. But in the spiritual realm, we understand that at some point justice meets mercy, so we are warned to walk humbly. We have enjoyed so many blessings we really do not deserve, that maybe we can trust God long enough to endure the hardships we don’t think we deserve. How can we expect one but not the other? I’m not suggesting we just lay down and take it. Accept the mistreatment. But maybe there’s an opportunity here, an invitation.

Maybe we can dig a little deeper and unearth purpose in all of this. There is a goldmine of strength and wisdom to be gained here, gifts the abusers will never enjoy. We have a community worth pursuing and a way to show the next generation how to endure, how to work, how to refine our methods and grow despite the attacks and the inevitable losses. Evolve. Overcome.

For all the people I miss and grieve in our family, for all the awful things I still fear, I choose to see how suddenly miracles tend to happen and how quickly healing can take place. I choose to acknowledge that magical season with Jocelyn and the deep relationship we have with Jessica now, and her sweet husband Alex. Day after day, all these years, even in the darkest times. I choose to see how God has blessed our family and our farm, how He has more than returned the time lost and how He has more than punished some of the evil. I now can even bless Colorado in my thoughts. When we choose to really look, even that storm poured out a tidal wave of blessings. We cannot forget that.

So. With that strength in my belly, I bless the Commission. I choose to see the beauty of the growing community there, the wealth of talent and goodness and faith. I thank God ahead of time for what He is doing, for the relief coming, for the answers and path ahead. Maybe we can’t see it yet, but it’s there. It’s safe to trust His guidance, one step at a time.

We don’t deserve a lot of things. Not another hard season, not more false accusations, and not the abundant goodness of Life.

Let the darkness rage, uncontrolled and furious. Pretend it is a wild animal held safely behind a thick glass wall, unbreakable.

I affirm that truth prevails and Love reigns. I choose joy.

XOXOXOXO
Marie

a new spin on victory gardens

February 9, 2023

Our grandparents and great grandparents had wartime versions of Victory Gardens that served them well and helped their families thrive in uncertain times. The government endorsed these efforts and more before industrialized farming took over.

Lately we are hearing more and more about “Victory Gardens,” and I expect that will only gain momentum. For a variety of good reasons, everyone seems to be rediscovering the appeal of growing food and maybe tip-toeing into sustainability.

I love this!

But…

I also see the idea ballooning in such a way that people are becoming discouraged almost as soon as they feel inspired. Lots of people are also beginning their adventure from a place of absolute terror.

In an environment of fear over rising food prices and broken supply chains, it’s easy to let something as natural and beautiful as home gardening fall into the category of obligation, panic, and unrealistic standards for success.

Let’s fix that.

Right here, today, with just a mindset shift, let’s reset. Before we write a single letter to a single lawmaker or even before we spend one dollar on grow lights or join any online forums trying to learn it all in one day, let’s rethink what a Victory Garden could possibly be, for you.

Victory could look like adding beauty, fragrance, creativity, and dimension to your life. Victory could be saving money by growing fancy herbs and better ingredients, just a little bit here and there. Victory might include just occasionally stepping aside from the bizarre supply chains we have created for ourselves or cultivating small, meaningful skills that build and compound on themselves every year. No need to be perfectly successful on your first try. Everyone fails. A lot.

squash bugs — ((hell hath no fury like a gardener overrun with these monsters))

Maybe victory for you would be making memories with your children and helping them see the natural world as a source of beauty and pleasure, and then one day helping them install their own gardens. Victory could be growing chemical free food more often, while at the same time rejecting stress and guilt over still buying average stuff from the store. It’s fine! Mix it up! You garden can be a supplement way before it is a substitute.

Victory is certainly discovering new ways to enhance your outdoor space, discovering a new hobby that keeps your body lifting and stretching and breathing fresh air, keeping your eyes off of electronics for a slice of each day. Victory is blanketing the earth with more trees, flowers, mulch, and foods. Victory is attracting and feeding all kinds of pollinators and wildlife. A very beautiful Victory Garden is one that encourages diversity.

Victory might be witnessing and immersing ourselves in the intricate, powerful, unstoppable Cycle of Life, participating in the seasons instead of complaining about them, being swept up in the life affirming wealth of daylight and the nitrogen rich snow and rainfall. Victory is learning to use kitchen scraps to feed your garden rather than overstuff the landfill. Victory is being part of the solution, in your own way, in your own time, with joy and freedom and confidence, rejecting fear.

I believe that working with fear, shame, or panic will not only kill your spirit but also at least stall your garden, maybe sabotage it completely. Your mindset matters. So get that sweet and level first. Rethink what a Victory Garden could be in your life, with your circumstances, needs, and cravings. What problems are you trying to solve? Where do your passions fall, naturally? There is a garden for you out there.

fresh homegrown watermelon oklahoma — ((If 2013 was the Summer of Basil, then 2014 was the Summer of Watermelon…xoxo))

Please consider growing something that makes you authentically happy. I want you, if you haven’t already, to discover for what “Victory” means for you and how to use gardening to pursue that in uniquely pleasing ways.

((20 sunflowers for Jessica’s 20th birthday… she came home the next year))

There are hundreds of ways to be a Victory Gardener.

Far be it from me to discourage anyone from attempting a true, traditional, full-fledged Victory Garden that increases your family’s groceries and stocks your pantry for winter, the kind your great-grandmother probably mastered. That is certainly within reach if you have the space and the time to devote to it. And what a noble goal! But also, I believe these other, very different gardening goals are every bit as noble.

Bonus points, always, for not using chemicals on your garden. Double bonus points for using natural fertilizers and compost. Triple bonus points for sharing your bounty and staying true to yourself as you go.

Almost done with these thoughts.

My Grandpa gave me lots of gardening advice, and it was all good. But one thing bears repeating here:

“The best fertilizer is the gardener’s shadow.” Spend time in your growing spaces, however large or small or weird or formal they are. Just be present, frequently. Watch, enjoy, pay attention, apply your considerable knowledge and creative energy there. It needs you as much as you need it. It will reward you by growing you right alongside it.

Let’s release that weirdo pressure to be the same kind of gardener as anyone else, friends. Let’s drop the fear and panic and just grow something. Anything. Nature will support us.

Life began in a Garden,
and Victory is our birthright
XOXOXO

respect your life

January 30, 2023

At the risk of fully enraging my husband who just wants light and easy stuff to stay light and easy, I am about to ruin a perfectly good raunchy comedy by extracting from it a luscious bit of wisdom. Please join me in this meanness.

A couple of weeks ago, Handsome and I indulged in some vegetative relaxation by re-watching some old comedies. Among them was The Change Up starring Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds. If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: Two life long best friends, now adults but leading very different lives, are suffering from respective versions of burnout. To remedy their angst, they hit the town for a night of revelry which culminates in them both urinating in a public fountain. While peeing side by side in the fountain, they make a wish simultaneously, I think just as lightning strikes? Or maybe it’s just at the stroke of midnight. Either way, their mutual wish, uncoordinated, is to have each other’s life.

Bam! Their mutual wish is granted, and the hilarious, predictable chaos ensues. Jason Bateman’s middle class, somewhat-happily married-with-children, upwardly mobile-white-collar-career, suburbian lifestyle is swapped with Ryan Reynold’s scruffy, ill mannered, sad-bachelor, rarely sober, disconnected-from-his-father, free wheeling, barely-surviving-but-also-very-free-and-promiscuous lifestyle. The connective tissue between them is the married guy’s house and wife. The men both float in and out of the domestic scene freely, and the wife, unaware that her husband and her husband’s best friend have switched bodies, well, it’s all so cringey. Lots of fun.

Here’s where I ruin the fun by extracting a message.

Somewhere past the middle point of the escapade, deep in the predictable and hilarious parts where each man is really sinking into the newness and novelty of his best friend’s exotic and unfamiliar, supposedly much craved lifestyle, one of them admonishes the other for not appreciating his life more. I can’t remember which one says it and at exactly what moment, but I think he says, “Respect your life, man!”

Respect your life.

Everyone in the world is susceptible to burnout, no matter how their life looks from the outside.

Most people will at some point wish for a different reality. It’s a normal and common human phenomenon. This shows imaginative pliability and an openness to growth, as long as we can avoid the sticky territory of envy and bitterness.

Respect your life.

This message was well timed for me. Every single day since we watched that movie, the phrase has hung in the air. I have felt more inspired to see the uniqueness of my days, the particular opportunities I have, and the weirdly beautiful custom fit between my talents, my responsibilities, and the needs I can perceive around me. Such a fast acting antidote to any comparison traps.

I have also tried to step outside of myself and see what I might be forgetting to notice, by viewing my life briefly as an outsider. That ones takes some effort, and who knows how effective it really is? But it’s a fun exercise. It invites me to dive more deeply into everything, and I love that feeling.

Respect your life.

Maybe you are familiar with the modern parable of the room full of crosses: A man issues a litany of complaints to God, that the cross he has been carrying in life is too big, too heavy, too cumbersome, too splintery. He is exhausted and wonders why everyone else has such lightweight, smooth, manageable crosses to bear. So God offers him a chance to exchange crosses. He ushers the man into a large room filled with hundreds of other crosses of varying sizes, materials, weights, and apparent difficulties. There are mammoth sized crosses that must have required the strength of armies. Ones made of rusted iron and spikes and ones so rough and shifting they were barely in one piece. Every option looked brutal and beyond his scope. The man scans his options, evaluating the various burdens carefully, and eventually chooses one. He finds a smaller one, a cross he can lift with a moderate effort, one shaped to his back and shoulders perfectly. It’s not smooth, but his shirt protects him just fine. He thanks God for the opportunity to trade down on his burden. God smiles and reveals that the cross he selected was the same one he had been carrying all along, that in His infinite wisdom, God had always known it was exactly what the man could bear safely.

Respect your life.

((Klaus tempting me with soccer on a snowy day))

If you feel weary of your life burdens, how could you reframe your thoughts about them, to know all over again, deep down, that you are not just capable of carrying them, but maybe destined to? That certainly you are the perfect person for the task?

If you are noticing the beauty in someone else’s life and quietly wishing it was yours, how could you remind yourself of the pain they might be hiding, of the sacrifices and responsibilities that come with their outward success? Better yet, how could you reinvigorate appreciation for the beauty in your own life?

I believe pretty deeply that the life situations into which we are born and the uniqueness with which we are each created are exactly the magic raw materials each of us needs to slowly and deliberately imagine, form, and refine a living masterpiece. Wishing for someone else’s life not only invites burdens we might now be able to handle; it also leaves our unique offerings on the table.

Respect your life.

And watch a lightweight comedy with me at your own peril. : )

“Be yourself.
Everyone else is already taken.”
~Oscar Wilde
XOXOXO

january t.g.i.f.

January 20, 2023

Hello, and happy Friday! Here’s a Brene Brown-style “TGIF” as we wrap up a short work week. I am feeling so good and hope you are, too. If not, I hope you know how to change that, no matter your circumstances. Taking the reigns on our emotions is a superpower. It’s how we change our actual, three-dimensional worlds.

((January reds laying the groundwork for Valentine’s Day soon))

((visiting mallards fluttering away from the pond))

((little Miss Hissy fit still not comfy with Klaus))

TRUSTING: I am trusting that Jocelyn is safe and healthy, as happy as a young woman can be, and that deep down she knows she is loved and treasured beyond words. I am trusting God’s timing and healing and the joyful power of all those reunions in recent years. We are trusting that Marigold passed as peacefully as she appeared to and that she felt our intense love. We are trusting that rainfall will replenish Oklahoma, that hay prices will soon adjust, and that our sweet old horses will stay healthy for many more years. I am also trusting in the timing of some personal goals (two book proposals and a few really unique community events here at the farm!).

GRATEFUL: Gratitude is the name of the game lately, ha! I am so grateful for a safe, comfortable, happy home, for this big, glorious nest we cultivate together, for our marriage, for all the daily Love between us and around us. We are immersed in Love that gets expressed in so many beautiful ways. I am thankful for constant, fun and meaningful communication with Jess and Alex, for quality time with family, for easy times with friends and neighbors and their precious dogs (Klaus’ best friends), when we all laugh so hard and just relax and make memories. We are thankful that the hens are laying big, colorful eggs again and that some long fought battles at the Commish are slowly yielding real success. I feel the beginning of relief coming, and it’s a thrill. Another cool thing for which I am grateful is that my husband has rekindled his Car Guy instincts and is waist deep in a new renovation project! He always seems happier with a big mechanical toy at his disposal, and his happiness makes me happy.

INSPIRED: Lately I have gulped in the beauty of art forms I am unlikely to ever even attempt myself, much less master, but they have nonetheless inspired me. Dancers, musicians, and painters are just amazing. They practice their elaborate crafts, create brand new works, share generously, and make the world infinitely more beautiful and interesting! Many of our actual friends are spending their lives as artists, and I just feel so lucky to absorb it all. It wells up inside me and inspires me to do more of my own creative work. I am also inspired, as all gardeners are in January, by the myriad possibilities of a brand new growing season. Recently I attended a master gardeners’ meeting where Julia, the Extension Director, shared a slideshow of her trip through England, and of course those gardens gave me so many ideas. Boundless beauty, such inventive themes. Also? I am thinking specifically of Van Gogh and his combination of gardens with painting. I think we need another painting day here at the Lazy W gardens. It’s been too long. We are also hosting a garden tea party in early spring. Does anyone want to come dance? We can make it a true bohemian day.

FAITH: We are still not attending church services, but My private faith practice is pretty nourishing. I love to start the day early with a short devotional, the related Bible passages, and usually journaling. Then I do walking meditations during breakfast chores. These ebb and flow with life and that day’s prayer requests. I have learned to stay in a posture of saying thank you all day long, of constantly naming blessings as they cross my mind, and of thanking God in advance for blessings showered on my people, for solutions to problems we are facing, for surprise miracles not yet seen. This practice not only feels wonderful; it yields stunning results. I strongly encourage you to sample it in your own life. Just thank God in advance for His help, internalize the sensation of your prayer being answered, and watch what happens. So simple. Also along the lines of practicing faith, I have become more protective over my own spirit lately, guarding more than ever the content of my information diet. I just don’t have the stomach for serial killer or murder mystery stories right now, nor really anything too tragically sad. The ideas and images in which I allow my heart to marinate quickly take shape in my days, in my attitude, in how I see the world, and really I just want more of the good, beautiful stuff. To that end, my podcast subscriptions, books, and video choices are heavily weighted to happiness studies and health, spiritualty, gardening, uplifting stories, you name it. I cannot remember that last time I finished even a short episode of a crime documentary, and that’s fine by me.

Okay, your turn! In what ideas or in whom are you trusting? For what are you grateful? What’s been inspiring you lately? And how are you practicing your personal faith? I would love to hear.

Happy Friday, friends,
and have the most luscious weekend.
XOXOXOXO

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