Is Silence a Legit Answer
Silence is an answer to prayer, if we allow ourselves to recognize it as such. Visualize a time when you were frantically launching prayer darts at God demanding immediate answers and solutions. Did you compulsively zero in on one circumstance after another asking yourself, “is that a sign? No. Over there, that’s a sign! Wait a minute, I think this is a sign.”
Stop! Reclaim your peace.
An Herb Garden Means Home
When I haven’t been able to go home since I can’t ever move back to Lebanon, I’ve dug in at each location on my life’s journey and planted an herb garden, recreating the tastes and smells of home.As in the picture above, I’m sitting in front of the garden I dug up behind my apartment in college. Herbs gift me with a sense of permanence because most herbs are perennial, returning every year with self-seeding or self- rooting. I can count on my herbs’ consistent presence. An herb harvest is plentiful, yielding its bounty season after season. Herbs are easy to process whether used fresh or dried for later. And herbs grow like weeds because that’s basically what they are!
Wake Up to your Passion
I come to the Garden Alone is my theme song, my personal anthem. Early morning is my favorite time of the day and strolling my garden paths alone at dawn, sipping my first cup of jasmine green tea, is the perfect start to any new day for me.
Who Me? A Slave
A show I enjoy watching features two men crisscrossing the country picking through people’s barns, attics, and storage units searching for treasures. I was gobsmacked, shocked during one episode of barn exploration when a massive pulley system revealed an equally massive yoke hanging from the rafters of a dilapidated barn. My mind went immediately to a picture of the poor farm animals standing obediently under this pulley system, waiting docilely and habitually for this yoke to be lowered onto their necks and backs.
The Biscuit, a Simple Old Recipe
I love simple old recipes that I make so often that their edges are worn down and they taste sure of themselves! There are several such recipes handed down in my family that I make without looking at the frayed recipe card. Don’t you just love the grandma handwritten recipes on index cards or in spiral notebooks?!?!
What makes you. . .you?
This morning, I needed to feel smarter than myself, so I tuned into “Ted Talks” on my morning walk. It thumped through my earbuds with each step, step, step around my neighborhood. The featured scientist was explaining “what makes us. . . us?” He predictably started with the acronym DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Boom! I had a flashback to Mrs. Rigby’s 9th-grade biology class at ACS (American Community School) in Beirut, Lebanon.
Eat Your Greens!
Farm to Table is the new buzz phrase in food lingo and is quickly becoming a worn out slogan. What does it mean for us who don’t live on a farm anyway?! Basically, it means eating seasonal and locally grown produce. Local means: in your area, in your backyard, on your patio, or even on your balcony. In the middle of a Texas winter, I’ve got growing in my raised beds, swiss chard, arugula, spinach, broccoli, parsley, celery, and an assortment of lettuce.
In Retrospection, Humility
I am unabashedly and unashamedly a scrapbooker. I chronicle our family’s ups and downs and turnarounds with pictures, mementos, and journaling. Why do I do this? Primarily I scrapbook because of the pure fun of losing track of time in a creative process and for the joy of looking back in retrospection.
Happy Birthday Sweet Baby
Mary held her baby Jesus close to her heart on his birthday. She knew without a doubt how special he was, for hadn’t the angel told her so? I’ve given birth three times: twice to healthy boys, and once to a baby girl who didn’t make it to full term and never got the chance to breathe on her own. However, the baby who best taught me the awe-inspiring lesson about the nature of God’s love was a two and a half pound premature meth addicted newborn abandoned at the emergency room of the hospital where I had been volunteering in the NICU.
Waiting, Waiting, and More Waiting
Christmas Advent is a time of waiting. I volunteer in our church infant nursery during Sunday School. There’s nothing like nestling with a newborn, their soft fuzzy heads laying just so on your chest, their padded bottoms cupped in your hand, feeling their butterfly breaths tickle your chin. I’ve been privileged to experience with our young families the mixed fearful anticipation and exhilarating excitement waiting together for their Advent newborns.