Sweet Sabbath

"To work in accordance with the Sabbath way is to protest by resisting the identity lies and cultural forces that fuel our anxiety, busyness, and distraction. The Sabbath way also invites us to play with life, to experiment and try things out so we can embrace slowness, gratitude, and delight." ~Travis West, 

"The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight"

My seed order arrived! And the free seed packet Baker Creek sent me is "Alice's Dream". There is no way they could have known our first grandbaby will be named Alice! I'm looking forward to playing and experimenting in the garden this spring and summer so I can "embrace slowness, gratitude, and delight".

 

Garden Update

"When we place ourselves in nature, our thoughts are naturally drawn to God's character and creativity. God designed nature to aid in this process of turning our thought to himself." 

~Erin Lynum, "The Nature of Rest"

My little garden brings me such joy. The tiger blush tomatoes are beginning to slow down, but I'm still getting a handful each day. The long beans are flourishing in our heat and humidity. They love the mid to upper 90's we're visiting every day.

But as my favorite farmer recently reminded me, it's past time to plant those fall crops. We saved quite a bit of seed from last year, so I had spaghetti squash and butternut squash seeds to poke into the ground.

I also had one package of beans that never got planted in the spring. 
Somehow my eyes are always bigger than my little raised beds, and I don't have enough room to plant everything I want to put into the ground! So, the rattlesnake beans went into the bean beds where I pulled out the bush beans a few weeks ago. Hopefully, we'll get some delicious things to eat before the first frost nips everything in mid-November.

 

Sweet Sabbath

"The Hebrew word Sha'abbat means 'to stop.' But it can also be translated 'to delight.' It has this dual idea of stopping and also of joying in God and our lives in his world."

~John Mark Comer, "The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry"

Things helping me rest and delight these days? Early morning bike rides as the sun rises over Tucker Creek Trail.

Visiting our bountiful farmer's market early on Saturday mornings, enjoying a chat with each vendor, and coming home loaded with beautiful produce also helps me slow down. 

I delight in each colorful item of food, but I also enjoy God's creativity in each of the people He designed. Hearing stories and celebrating with the people who take the time to raise the food is such a delight! Washing and chopping leafy green takes time, so does simmering them in my mom's cast iron Dutch oven with bacon from one of my favorite farmers. Stopping. Delighting. Sabbathing.

Delight

Now more than ever, we need to pour the light of our souls into the world. We need to gather all the goodness and love and forgiveness and playfulness and joy and gratitude and attention and encouragement and silliness and presence we can and offer it to everyone we meet. We need to reconnect with our own delight, and we need the delight of others."

~Travis West, "The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight"

I surely love volunteering at CARTI. Last week when I showed up, the waiting room was eerily quiet and almost empty. I quickly learned that the oncologist was absent and the chemo side of the building wasn't giving infusions. When I asked what else I could do to help, one of the employees led me to a storage room and asked if I could label and restock bottles of Ensure for patient nutrition. This involved taking all of the bottles off the shelf and reloading the shelf in order of expiration date. I delighted in helping this way! It was a small offering of my presence and gratitude and attention.

Sometimes answering the question: "What delights you?" can be challenging. Not only does volunteering at CARTI bring me delight, but so does growing my own food and cooking it to share with the people I love. The chocolate beauty sweet peppers I harvested today are beautiful and delicious! Tonight, they will go into creamy chicken pasta salad to bring my family delight.

Rest and Work

"Sabbath sustained me as torpor sustains the hummingbird. Further, daily rhythms of rest equipped me to faithfully carry out the work God called me to do without overextending myself. Beginning my day in His Word rather than my email inbox, enjoying walks around my neighborhood between tasks, and pausing to pray and invite his restful presence into my day reminded me He is the one carrying out this work at his pace and for his glory. I can rest and work in vital harmony."

~Eryn Lynum, "The Nature of Rest"

Daily rhythms of rest around here look like walking out to my little garden to check for ripe veggies in between cello students or as I'm hanging out clothes to dry. Growing food always reminds me that "He is the one carrying out this work at his pace and for his glory"!

Making time to sit down and eat lunch together on the patio also helps us slow down and reconnect in the midst of days filled with summer school, advisor checking, Zoom meetings, and cello students.

Maintaining a rhythm of moving our bodies each morning helps keep us strong and healthy, equipped to fulfill each task the Lord gives us throughout the day.

Days 13 and 14 of 40

We are way behind on our 40 days of dates for 40 years of friendship, but that's okay. Our friendship and our marriage are still going strong! For our anniversary, we decided to go back to one of our favorite cabins in the middle of nowhere: Beit Shalom.

On the way to the cabin Friday afternoon, we stopped at one of my favorite roadside stands and bought several watermelons. They often have cantaloupe and corn and tomatoes and allllll of the local delicious summer produce. I read "The Sabbath Way" out loud and we discussed as Aaron chauffeured. 

Saturday morning began with anniversary sourdough discard blueberry muffins gifted by my favorite farmer. I watched the mist slowly move down the valley. A slow, peaceful start to the day was exactly what we needed.

Due to some family generosity, we made a last minute decision to float the middle Buffalo River. We had never floated this section before.

The river was full of people and music, and I enjoyed my husband using his incredible skills he has honed from paddling a dugout canoe around the Pacific Ocean. I hardly had to pick up a paddle!

I just soaked up the view and the love flowing behind me as Aaron deftly steered and navigated the busy river. 

"Delight is both a trailhead for and a signpost along the Sabbath way. If a Sabbath practice is whittled down to its irreducible core, what remains is largely a commitment to making room in one's life to recover a sense of delight." ~Travis West

We pulled into this shallow cave for lunch and chatted while we pulled out veggies and hummus to go along with our cold brats from Shaky K Farm. I lost all sense of time and didn't even check my watch. One of the concepts in "The Sabbath Way" is that time slows down or even ceases to exist when we are truly resting. I haven't experienced that in a very long time. My brain naturally runs to the next thing on my to-do list. This day was full of delight and joy and connection, truly a much needed day of rest and play.

July Garden Bounty

My little backyard garden isn't producing much this year. Too much shade! But I'm grateful for the farmers market and my friends who faithfully bring their abundance to share.

Eggplant recently morphed into something that looked fancy, but was simple to make. Eggplant Involtini with Moroccan Marinara Sauce was delicious!

My long beans are finally producing. They love the heat and humidity that July offers them.

And we have a volunteer butternut squash that grew out of the compost! What a good reminder that no matter how hard I try to make things grow, God is the one who does the work and provides the bounty.

Sweet Sabbath

"Each week as we experiment with embracing our enough-ness, reconnecting to our bodies, decoupling our value from our productivity, and receiving the gifts of rest and delight, we are partnering with the Spirit in discovering the abundant life Jesus came to offer us."

~Travis West, "The Sabbath Way: Making Room in Your Life for Rest, Connection, and Delight"

My friend, Tanya, planted nasturtium seeds and grew some for my birthday present. The bright orange blossoms begin to unfold this week, and every time I see them, I receive the "gifts of rest and delight".

Something that helps me reconnect with my body and decouple my value from my productivity is pushing preschoolers on our backyard swing. Listening to them squeal and ask for more over and over and over brings me joy and encourages me not to look at my watch or worry about my long list of things to do. The Holy Spirit uses these precious kiddos to discover the "abundant life that Jesus came to offer" in fresh, new ways.

 

Saturday Satisfaction

"Vertical awe puts my heart at ease. It gives my soul rest. It produces contentment and satisfaction." ~Paul David Tripp, "Awe: Why it Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do"

Saturday mornings are for walking around the farmers market, saying hello to my farmer friends, and grabbing beautiful, delicious produce and meat. One of my favorite farmers knows we like to eat pumpkin greens, so when she has them available, she always sets some aside for us :)

Rest, contentment, satisfaction. Regardless of my activities, I want my life to be characterized by those three things. Keeping my awe vertical instead of horizontal goes a long way towards building rest, contentment, and satisfaction in my life. 

A baby shower for Schalchlin cousins at one of our oldest and most faithful supporting churches? Yes, please. What a joy to watch community come together to encourage this young family! We caught up with people we haven't seen in a while, grabbed lots of hugs, and soaked up the sweet atmosphere.

And the rest of the Saturday we spent shelling purple hull peas. We just finished the last of the 2024 peas, so the timing is perfect for the next batch to go in the freezer. And in our tummies!

 

Recapture, Refocus, Redirect

"I need to put my heart in a place where it can once again be in awe of the grandeur of God that reaches far beyond the bounds of the most expressive words in the human vocabulary. I need awe of him to recapture, refocus, and redirect my heart again and again. And I need to remember that the war for the awe of my heart still wages inside me." 

~Paul David Tripp, "Awe: Why it Matters for Everything We Think, Say, and Do"

Growing things is good for my heart in so many ways. Trying to coax food from seed to sprout to transplant to fruit takes endless perseverance and a reliance on the One who makes things grow. I also learn many new things along the way, like the need to add calcium nitrate to the soil when blossom end rot rears its ugly head. Trying new seeds every year brings colors and tastes into my home. These lovely "blush tiger" tomatoes have grown better than anything else so far!

Growing things also reveals idols in my heart and shows me where my awe is placed. When I pick raspberries or colorful beans, my heart is recaptured and refocused, and I definitely need those constant reminders! My little raised beds are quickly growing into a place where my awe for the Lord is refreshed and strengthened.

Ikigai and Community

"If I am disconnected from community and isolated, my walk with God gets harder." 

~Marcus Warner, "A Deeper Walk"

I recently got to cheer for several of my string students as they performed in "Bye Bye Birdie" with Red Curtain Theater. So proud of this bunch! Just before the show began, the woman sitting next to me gushed about how her small granddaughter had been welcomed and included by the theater family, despite the granddaughter's inexperience and young age.

 

Katherine and I continue to chip away at "sewing school" with my mom. I'm really grateful for her investment of time, energy, and patience. We've had all sorts of sweet conversations as we picked out seams and talked about our spiritual walks and ironed and made quick trips to Hobby Lobby for the things we forgot to buy earlier.

As the bush beans wane in the summer heat, my long beans are taking off. Soon we will have these reminders of the Solomon Islands on our plates. I'm surprised at how much joy my little garden brings me. I've been thinking about Ikigai lately, a term I learned at some of my professional development. It's a Japanese term that goes beyond answering the question of what gets you up each morning. The term encompasses "the intersection of passion, talent, and benefit to others", and finding a diagram with overlapping spheres to determine one's own ikigai is easy. Information about this way to approach life abounds and encourages me to be intentional about how I spend my time and energy to build my community.

A Good, but Inconvenient, Life

"A meaningful life is often inconvenient—and that’s what makes it good. It asks for effort, for presence, for staying when things aren’t easy. If we want to feel rooted, purposeful, and less alone, we need to reclaim a little inconvenience." ~Israa Nasir

If you have a few thoughtful minutes today, might you click on the link above and read this well written article? Nasir puts my thoughts into words on a page. I'm also beginning to wonder how these concepts connect to and support the idea of a Sabbath lifestyle.

"This is the culture we’ve built, one that tells us convenience is king, that needing people is weak, and that time is only valuable if it is optimized. But this cult of convenience carries a cost: our relational muscles have atrophied, and our tolerance for the messy, beautiful work of being in community has all but disappeared." This summer, I'm seeking to build community by inviting friends to take a walk with me. Sometimes it's a 6:30 a.m. before work walk, sometimes it's a middle of the day "walk on the trail to a coffee shop" kind of walk. 

Growing my own food and buying from local farmers isn't convenient or efficient, but the results are worth it. My little raised beds take time and energy as I sprinkle diatomaceous earth to ward off aphids and avoid pesticides. My farmer buddies get up early and work hard all day, depending on the Lord to provide the right weather conditions. Their food tastes better than anything we can buy at the grocery store, and the way these farmers care for their animals and plants is good stewardship of our earth.

I'm tossing Nasir's words about time and relationships into the pot on the backburner of my mind to let them simmer for a while.

Raspberries Galore

Our raspberries produce abundantly, but briefly. I made these Raspberry Oat Crumble Squares for a church women's dessert night, and they were delicious! We have a couple of ladies with Alpha Gal Syndrome, and a few more who are gluten free, so whenever we have gatherings with food, I try to bring something they can eat.

More often, I layer our raspberries in jars for overnight oatmeal, one of my favorite summer breakfasts:

1/2 cup rolled oats

2 tbsp cocoa powder

1/2 cup raw milk

1 tsp chia seeds

1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt (or vanilla)

1/2 cup raspberries

Refrigerate overnight, stir and eat for a yummy start to the day!

 

Garden Abundance

So many things are growing right now! The lilies, hydrangeas, and the very first of the zinnias made a lovely bouquet to take to my surgeon's office.

The beans are trying to grow. But we're not the only ones who like to eat them.

The tomatoes are struggling mightily with aphids, the zucchini are succumbing to who knows what, and my purple teepee beans have real life "very hungry (purple) caterpillars".

But the raspberries from my former math teacher are prolifically producing.

Stepping into the tunnel feels like traveling to Narnia through the wardrobe. Plus mosquitoes. 

So we're giving away berries to my cello students, neighbors, family, and friends. And eating all things raspberry.

Summer School

"So your job is simply this: Focus on doing your best to honor God with whatever He has given you. The Bible calls this stewardship, and it's how we keep it light while pursuing a vision for our lives."

~Joel Malm, "Keep it Light: The Freedom of Priorities in Life, Work, and Love"

Katherine took concurrent college classes throughout her junior year, and during the spring semester she had a forty-five-minute commute. She knew her capacity and chose to delay Advanced Biology until summer. We got started her first day by walking to a nearby coffee shop and splurging on drinks to celebrate the beginning of summer school.

She and I chose patterns and materials for the other portion of summer school, sewing school with my mom. It's been way too long since I pulled out my little sewing machine, and I need to polish up my skills. I'm looking forward to creating beautiful clothes with Katherine this summer.

My portion of summer school is to continue taking professional development courses to keep my Arkansas teacher's license current. I haven't needed that license in several years, but part of my good stewardship is to stay as sharp and prepared as possible.

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Our local co-op provides a wide variety of options. Recently, my time learning has included everything from information about the Blue Zones to suicide prevention training.

Sweet Sabbath

"The proximity of a Sabbath practice (in that it happens in direct and regular relationship to my everyday relationships and circumstances) helps to clear my vision to see more completely and lovingly what I have." ~Justin McRoberts, Sacred Strides

Recently, several people have reached out to tell me how much they are enjoying my hydrangeas. I can't take much credit, my mom grew these from her own plants, then placed them along the north side of our house while we were overseas.

 

Slowing down to intentionally rest certainly helps "clear my vision to see more completely and lovingly what I have". What do I have? Beautiful flowers, certainly. But also, a thoughtful mama and a community that cares enough to tell me that they are also soaking up the beauty of God's creation in my yard.

Raspberries Loading

 

Our raspberry trellis is like a portal to another world.

"All your works praise you, Lord; your faithful people extol you. They tell of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might, so that all people may know of your mighty acts and the glorious splendor of your kingdom." Psalm 145:10-12

July 2024 - "He is speaking always and everywhere"

"God is a God of galaxies, of storms, of roaring seas and boiling thunder, but He is also the God of bread baking, of a child's smile, of dust motes in the sun. He is who He is, and always shall be. Look around you now. He is speaking always and everywhere." 

~N.D. Wilson, "Death by Living"

Ways I heard God speaking in July:

-A bounty of fragrant basil on our back patio and fresh tomatoes at the farmers' market produced quarts of spaghetti sauce in glass jars, waiting for the cold of winter to make us reach again for summer 

-Peach upside-down cake to utilize the ripe peaches abundant in July (our favorite recipe is from Beatrice Ojakangas)

-Bushels and bushels of purple hull peas shelled late in the afternoon on the porch, then frozen to be cooked up with some of our favorite beef sausage and enjoyed on cold nights

-PraiseWorks, one more year for Katherine to enjoy being a part of something big and beautiful

-Continuing to read and work through another gem by Curt Thompson, which is nurturing my love for neuroscience at the intersection of Christianity and helping me grow

-This little passage links some trails around my hometown. Our normal bike route was recently disrupted by construction, and this path squeezes in between two houses in a subdivision. Every time I ride my bike here, I feel a little bit like I'm opening the wardrobe into Narnia :)

-Astoundingly, this thick stack of cards has been stretched across my wall for the last year, encouraging and strengthening me. So many people sent snail mail and buoyed me through a hard year of cancer treatments!