I love warm days during cold months. I love exploring with Anna while Jules naps. During the winter weeks I forget how important warm sunshine is to the soul.

Loving these postcards.

A new tradition for me and Anna is to take the trash up to our roadside trash can. We have a long driveway. The past few times, Anna sits in the passenger seat, having gotten in and buckled her own seat belt, puts her head on the rolled down window. With the breeze in her hair and smile and sun on her face, I get glimpses of the girl she might become. It makes me both all-consumingly grateful. And leaves me marveling at this life.

From a book I finished recently: “In relinquishing interaction and communication, giving social media a rest and entering a period of quietness, we strengthen our souls and give them space to recover. All that stimulus exacts a cost, imposes wear and tear, as well as interesting and educating and entertaining us. Silence is like a quiet pool of peace in which the stresses of modern life can be soothed away. It’s also the place where we learn to know God and know ourselves. Nobody can advance in wisdom and understanding without being prepared to shut up and listen just once in a while. As we listen to others, as we listen to our own souls, as we listen to the still small voice of the Spirit, as we listen to the singing of birds and the flowing of water and the soughing of the night wind in great trees, we find insight into deeper reality developing, as we settle into peace.” Penelope Wilcock

New thing taking root in me: information is not transformation. More often than not, transformation happens when obedience happens. Or when I allow enough space to absorb — the shock, the beautiful, the hard, the grace — instead of always skimming off the top or running on fumes.