My sister and I had a long satisfying conversation about things spiritual. What we were learning.  "You should tell the story of the Zion Maidens on your blog," she said. 

Years I've spent not fully liking myself. A bent toward people pleasing and clamoring after being loved, approved of and wanted by others. An age-old longing. God's love really the only panacea. Couldn't I get it? Don't I get it? It's taken decades. 

These last months I've gotten much more skilled in receiving that divine advance of love toward me. I've surrendered to the tenderness. I feel as if I've climbed a mountain. I would name the mountain MT. IDENTITY. There's a piece of me that believes the climb is merely a mirage--that there are more and higher peaks truly impossible for me to scale. That I must somehow prove something. But there's a greater part of me that knows I've arrived. I'm at that destination of I AM THE BELOVED. That's my truth. There are no more peaks for me to summit. I've got this one. My territory is here. I've put down my flag at this place. I believe that I am the beloved of God. All of my truest identity flows from this admission. It doesn't matter that I have issues of self-doubt, passivity and lack of faith at times. All that matters is that God sees me as His, approves of me, affirms me, His affection assured, no matter my weakness, no matter my circumstances.

What I have had for the past six years, what has been constant and steady in my life is the novel I've been writing. This has been my home, the place I could always retreat to. The place I could sometimes even feel powerful...the place where I am most myself.~Lily King (From Writers and Lovers)

Eons ago, when I was new mother, a friend of mine suggested we get babysitters and attend a seminar on organizing our homes. Gain ideas on creating a more beautiful environment. After making the arrangements for childcare, we traveled two hours south from San Bernardino, California to La Jolla. The event was not a traditional seminar located at a hotel, but rather held in the speaker's home. She lived in a sprawling two-story house that overlooked the ocean. She graciously invited us into a space she had carved out in her living room set up with folding chairs. A grand piano sat positioned to our left, and a view of the sparkling ocean lay directly in front of us. The speaker, perhaps in her late fifties or early sixties, stood almost six feet tall. Silver hair brushed the shoulders of her expensive blazer, fitted out with enormous shoulder pads so popular in the nineties. Her lecture provided detailed recommendations on ordering our homes. She then provided a tour of her house, opening drawers and closets, pointing with elegant, tapered fingers to examples of her organizational tips.

I don't remember this woman's name.  All I recall is that on the drive home, my friend and I lamented that we didn't have the ability to do what she'd done. Didn't have the money. Didn't have space. For heaven's sake, her closets were the size of bedrooms in our apartments. I remember the one tip I did remember. "Feel free to use all your unmatched tableware at dinner parties," she exclaimed as she lifted her hair from the giant shoulder pad and flipped the shining strands onto her back. "Eclectic is marvelous!" 

We have become His poetry, a re-created people that will fulfill the destiny He has given each of us.~Ephesians 2:10 (The Passion Translation)

I watched my bedroom window go from deep darkness to golden light as the sun rose and made its entrance. I often sit by that window to read and meditate, to gather my thoughts as I open a new day. To make my lists. That morning, though, I could feel my heartbeat thrumming inside my chest, thoughts flailing through all that could possibly go wrong with the move. Fear and a mounting realization emerged that Giovanni and I would face living somewhere impermanently before we landed in our downsize location. 

When my dad died in 2000, I received his Living Bible. My dad loved to study the Bible and had various translations. He often taught classes in the Presbyterian Church where I attended as a girl. This particular Bible held many of his handwritten notes in the margins. That morning I reached for my dad's Bible. I hadn't touched it in several months. In my anxiety-ridden state, I flipped through the pages and landed on a rectangular sheet of scrap paper I'd never found in the twenty years I'd had the Bible. There in my father's distinct printing he'd written a verse out. John 14:4.

I want to rest. I want to breathe quietly again.~Tennessee Williams

I pulled my ball cap snugly over my head and slipped headphones over my ears. A walk listening to classical music during the autumnal weather would do my frayed emotions good. Anxiety loomed with Covid blasting through the world. Politics splintering the country. Our house for sale. The guy who made an offer wanted to cut down all the mature trees in the front yard. The trees felt like the last straw. How I loved those trees. They were like friends. 

I heard leaves crunching underneath my shoes as I walked. Hundreds of acorns lay piled along the side of the road. I carried a mug of hazelnut coffee that warmed my hands. I breathed deeply, exhaling the angst. In the coolness of the morning I let go and lifted my face to the light. 

The trick is learning to take things as they come and fully, too, with no resistance or fear, not trying to grip them too tightly or make them bend.~Paula McLain (From Circling The Sun)

I yelled at him, my voice thin and high. I slammed my open hand on the table, my palm red, stinging. Then my husband yelled back, striking his hand on the table too. He has bigger hands, so it was loud. "I'm done," I shouted, and ran out of the room. We were fighting about ceilings, (of all things) after looking at houses to buy earlier that day. All I said was that I like high ceilings," I whined. "But you've got to understand, Priscilla, that warm air travels upward, and the utility bills are higher; it's much better to have lower ceilings," he said. His voice was really, really noisy, as was mine.

Change is noisy, and it's not about the ceilings. It's about uncertainty, about ambiguity, about money, about compromise, about living with the opacity of where we'll settle next. It's about grief, too. Letting go of a home and life we've honed and developed for the last decade.