This year, our current home, the one I’m sitting in now, has become affectionately referred to in our family as “the old house”. For the past year, we’ve been planning a move “up the lane”, where we have been extending a little bungalow at my in laws’ place. It’s a small extension, and a small…
Category: Lifestyle
What I’ve Been Reading: Once Upon a Time in the East, by Xiaolu Guo and Hungry, by Grace Dent
These are two ostensibly different memoirs, but they have in common authors who reveal an immense force of vulnerability, strength, tenderness and passion. Both women have sharp intelligence, gritty determination and a gift for insightful, vivid writing. In both books, we explore childhood: Guo’s in rural China and Dent’s in working class Carlisle. Both authors…
World Adoption Day
It’s World Adoption Day, and, as with many of these occasions, its immediate effect on my day-to-day life has been pretty low. I saw a couple of extra adoption related posts on social media, and that was about it. And yet… Adoption, of course, affects every minute of my day-to-day life, every day. Adoption is…
List (A Poem)
Sometimes I feel a weight in the world: it’s dreary And I know it’s not just me. Sometimes I see strain and grief pervading things The ache and edge that all of this brings. The effort it takes to wade through the pressure Of comfort and wanting Or striving and worrying. Or the lonely stone…
Gracious Uncertainty
I’ve had these two words ringing around my heart and head for days now. Each morning, when I have my shower, I take two minutes while the water warms up to read a page of a Christian devotional book. Perhaps more than ever, I’ve needed these two minute reads lately. Often tired after a broken…
Some of the people I don’t know, to whom I am immensely grateful
Words are powerful things, especially when they are strung together tenderly, with art, care and passion. I think, often, that I really don’t know where I’d be without the words of books and songs. Shauna Niequist describes this eloquently in her book, Cold Tangerines. She tells the story of the birth of her first child…
Limits
If there’s one thing that a nice, long summer holiday can teach you, it’s that we all have limits! Fill in the gaps for yourself: There are limits to how much spending/mess/bickering/clutter/adventure/organising/day trips/food/sleeplessness/work/failure/achievement/expectation_____ I can handle. I recently read this – about knowing our limits – by Micha Boyett (If you’ve not signed up for…
Calm and Chaos
Finding calm in amongst life’s chaos is something that I’ve been learning about lately. A lot of my reading material, conversations, and general day to day experiences have circled back around this theme and I feel a huge swell of gratitude for all the wisdom and encouragement I have encountered on this subject. I’ve been…
Life Lately
Our little corner of the world, in June, is timelessly, heartachingly lovely. In the evenings, I sit with both children trying to sleep, listening to birdsong through the open windows as the light begins to fade. The profusion of wildflowers and weeds festoons everything: the steps by the barn, the yard, the garden, the hedgerows…
“The marvel of an ordinary life”
I’m lying on the floor of my son’s room late at night again, with an aching back, trying to help him to settle to sleep. The rain and wind – which have been unseasonably wild all day – are lashing against the window. I’ve been grumpy, I feel tired and hungry, but as he quiets…
Small Things
Oh, the small things. The small things are life itself, in all its fullness. The tiny dog violets on my parents’ lawn, little specks of blue, which on close inspection are so very detailed; The orange tipped butterfly, fluttering nearly as fast as my laughing daughter running along; The moment or two lying next to…
Life Lived 