In the Heart of my Home

Just a Random Collection of Thoughts

I find myself:

::noticing God's glory

There are tulips sprouting up through the hard ground! Glory!

::listening to 

Signing Time. Sarah is addicted lately.

::clothing myself in 

Jeans, sweater. Same old thing. 

::talking with my children about these books

We're digging deep into the Lent basket.

::thinking and thinking

About what refreshes and restores me. Writing the Restore Workshop has been such a blessing! I've learned so much in the process and I'm pretty excited (and equally terrified) to share it..

::pondering prayerfully

Let yourself be seen by all as you really are. Just as we are in the sight of God, so let us be in the sight of all.

~ St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

::carefully cultivating rhythm

It's Spring Break week for my college kids. It's not for my six still at home. Delicate rhythm here, but so far, so good. Those Restore strategies? They're being tested to the limits this week. The last college break darn near killed me. Not this time.

::creating by hand

all baby, all the time:-).

::learning lessons in

Let's see... Podcast production, photo editing, photo storage...I'm living on the digital edge this week, friends.

::encouraging learning 

Getting ready to launch into an intensive on the Civil War. I intended to do this last year before our Bull Run bluebell days and it didn't happen. This year, it's already happening. 

::begging prayers

for Shawn Kuykendall and his family  

::keeping house

Just trying to stay ahead of the big boy deluge. 

::crafting in the kitchen 

I'm really loving the Oh She Glows cookbook. Vegan all the time won't fly with all the men around my table this week, but I'm beginning with vegan and just adding a simple meat to the meal. That way, I know we're all veggi-centric.

::loving the moments

I've had some really good moments with my eldest in the past week or so. We've stood at soccer in the pouring rain and in the bright sunshine. Rain hiding our tears, sunglasses doing the same.He bounces from the ICU to the world outside, the world that previously was so full of Shawn. I'm not comfortable sharing the details of Shawn's struggle or of Michael's pain, but I'm incredibly grateful that I know my boy's heart and it's good. Very good..


::giving thanks 

for a bright-eyed boy who came home for spring break smiling, positively overflowing with excitement over the projects he's got going. Smiling. Sounds so simple, but I cannot begin to describe the joy and gratitude I have for those smiles. Words evade me.

God is so good.

living the liturgy

I love Lent. I'm not sure that's a good thing, since it's supposed to be penitential and all, but there you go--I Love Lent. I like the focused attention to serious things. I like the way that even though the secular culture has commandeered Advent and Christmas and Easter, Lent still feels authentically Christian.

::planning for the week ahead

I've got some more podcasts to record for the Restore Workshop. I have a good bit of driving to and from soccer practice. I hear the washer telling me that a big stack of fabric is ready to be made into a baby layette or two. And there's this honey cowl that I began after Mike's dad's funeral. I intended it to wear with my black dress. I need to finish it. 

 

Questions and Answers about Restore

  

I've gotten a few questions about the Restore Workshop that you might be wondering yourself, so I thought I'd do a quick post to answer those questions.

I watched the video and think this sounds great! Do you know if there is a necessity to be available at certain times? Or is it at your own leisure?

The workshop will go live on March 16 and then new content will be added daily. All the content will remain on the site until a month after the last post goes up on April 26th. You can pace yourself all during that time. Also, you can download the content and save it until later.

Will Facebook be needed for the Restore workshop? I'd like to go off Facebook for Lent but I NEED this workshop.

Absolutely, positively NOT. No way.

#facebookfree 

No social media will be required for this workshop. 

Can you describe the content?

Each week is full to the brim with helps and tools. In Week 5, which falls during Holy Week, there will only be quiet time meditations each day.  There is a daily quiet time encouragement each day of the workshop, seven days a week. On Mondays I will share a pre-recorded podcast with women who have experience that overwhelmed, exhausted feeling and who have some helpful insight on restoration. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday bring in-depth essay on a specific dimension of restoration, exploring the tools we can use to bring us back to the life God intended we live. On Fridays, I'll offer a tutorial for creating something related to the topic of the week, something to lift your spirits and invite beauty into your lives. Most Friday creative pursuits have at least two options: one that takes a while and one that is fully do-able during a baby's short nap. Along the way, we hope you will be delighted by special gifts from our hearts to yours, like a place to journal and beautiful quote and verse printables to print out and hang. If you choose, you will also have a chance to engage in community in a private, encouraging, and restful place, learning from and sharing your journey with others. 

Will it require we go to the website each day or will it be delivered to our inbox daily? I'm trying to understand how this might fit into an internet lenten fast. 

It will be posted daily to the site. I think it would break an absolute fast, but I think it would work to just visit the site and download the PDFs and go about your day. I guess if you really wanted to stay away from the the web altogether, you could ask a big kid or your husband to download the PDFs for you. You wouldn't participate in conversation and you'd have the essence of the workshop on a paper copy. The essays and tutorials are all PDFs. The daily meditations are only available on the site throughout the workshop.

It's the workshop written from a Catholic perspective?

I'm Catholic, so I suspect everything about me is influenced by my tradition. That said, this workshop is written for women of all faiths and denominations. My contributors come from across the communities of faith, joined together in grace and sisterhood. In conversations within the community, we ask that love, grace, and charity guide our speech with one another, and find our grounding in faith within the guidance of the Nicene Creed. 

Are there any hardware or software requirements to be able to participate?

As long as you can access and see the website, there are no other requirements. 

Are the podcasts with Ann, Sarah, Aimee, Ginny, and Colleen at a specific time? Do we have to be available that day?

The podcasts are pre-recorded; the content is loaded at 8 am EST, so you’ll have access to each podcast in the morning on Mondays. It will then stay on the site for the duration of the workshop, so there is plenty of time to listen!

Are we reading essays written by you? Or are those 3 a week essay prompts for us?

I have written all the essays and all the Quiet Time prompts. The only writing left for you is your private journaling.

Ok, so you said we can print this right? I'm on the computer so little and Iphones don't work for me when I'm trying to *restore*. I need paper.

We have plenty for your paper! All the essays are lovely PDFs just waiting for a pretty binder. They had some awesome ones at Target for under $5, by the way.

This sounds wonderful. Is it directed to mothers? I, sadly, am not a mother, but a working wife and I would love to participate in something like this.

While I am writing to mothers from a mother’s perspective, the workshop content is surely helpful even if you are not a mom…there are a few places where I focus on how to balance children’s needs and serve them wisely, but I’m sure you can pull out what is applicable to you and your life. Most of the content is not focused specifically on motherhood, but on how to nurture ourselves in different areas. We’d love to have you join us!

How long will registration remain open? 

Registration will close just before Holy Week (April 12). The only thing you’ll miss if you join us late is the daily conversations with other participants and the slow progression of the daily quiet time meditations throughout the course, but the content will all be there for you to use and you’ll be able to read the previous conversations as well.

I would also like to gift a friend with this workshop- how can I do that ?

What a lucky friend! You would go through the purchase as normal- just mark in the notes in paypal that it is for a friend and their name and email address, and I’ll take care of the rest! I’ll send you a separate email with a note you can share with your friend to let her know. We've had a lot of fun bearing these gifts in the last week and we've found they're very much appreciated!

For more information and to watch the video invitation, click here. 

Are you burned out, boxed in, and beat up?

I have something for you!

If you are feeling weary, frayed around the edges, or even falling apart at the seams, let's make something beautiful together. If you go to bed exhausted and wake up tired and it all seems like to much to do, let's journey together to a place of rest and peace. If you are willing to dig deep, do some soul-work, and seize the abundant joy that is Easter, let's begin the restoration.

 

Click here to take the first step.

A very small peek at RESTORE

 

 

 

I've got a real quick needle & thREAD this week. Most of my reading has been related to a burnout recovery workshop I'm writing called RESTORE. I'll have lots more to share with you on that next week (God willing). This morning found me deep in the book of Job and C. S. Lewis' The Problem of Pain.

Katie and I played with beribboning towels yesterday, in advance of receiving some brand new unbleached diapers destined to become very pretty burp cloths. Let the baby sewing begin! A tutorial for those and for the embellished, quilted towels will be part of the RESTORE workshop. 

That's all for today here. We've got a busy weekend ahead and my front door will be revolving with comings and goings of a half dozen people or more. Off to prepare!

What are you sewing and reading this week? I really do want to hear all about it!

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