Make Room 🏡 {Day 63}

I could stare at our skies forever around here.
Getting out some different coffee mugs for summer!
See you next spring!
Eclectic birthday gifts! 🥰♥️
Kids were so happy!
Smells heavenly!

Better is a dry crust eaten in peace than a house filled with feasting-and conflict.

Proverbs 17:1~

Simplicity makes room for relationship. ♥️🌿 Relationships with God, others, and everything real around us. It’s ok to love home, slow routines, and regular boring rhythms. I’ve been thinking about how on an extended social media break I start to slow down, revel in my mundane tasks, realize I don’t have to keep up with anything other than getting meals on the table and washing laundry occasionally. I can have long times with my coffee steaming into the early morn, Bible flipped open, hummingbirds approaching. I can listen and chat and make Rice Krispies treats with my little boys. I can read or not read, wear my favorite comfy flannel from a thrift store with no need for more. I can walk with my music and the wind. It’s so refreshing. It doesn’t need to become more than it is, some-holier-than-thou move, but lets me step out of the stream of a vague unease of missing out, the guilt and fear of not keeping up. ‘They’ want you to feel that way. So that you need them or whatever it is they’re selling. It’s unbelievably freeing to step back and let it swirl by. It makes me want to pray more about how I use social media and maybe stepping away from forms of it that aren’t bringing me joy and enhancing this quieter, contemplative pace.

~ 🌿♥️

Hello, Luna + Quote for reflection 💚 {Day 60}

Is it possible to live forgiven and not carry great loads of guilt, to participate in the salvation of the world? Is it possible to love and grow into a relationship with another person in which we are enriched and enhanced and built up? Is it possible to bless and be blessed? To give others the best that is in us and not the worst? To receive from others their best and not their worst? Yes. It is. As everyday realities, these births are wonders, whether as a new baby in the world or as a new creature in Christ. We are launched by acts of love and promise into ways of seeing and being. Our first birth thrusts us kicking and squalling into the light of day. Our second birth places us laughing and worshiping in the light of God. Like Issac. Laughter. Amen.

Eugene H. Peterson, As Kingfishers Catch Fire, p. 27 ~

These are a few of my favorite things currently…✨ {Day 57}

  • A few early birthday gifts have trickled my way 😍♥️✨
  • My new 5 year journal- still establishing writing a list of things I’m thankful for right before bed!
  • My Kindle, my eyes and hands thank your adjustable font size and your lightness, Kind Sir ♥️✨
  • Stacks of books in my room, thanks to the public library and a few of my own rescued from the great pack up for remodeling
  • Journals, pens, markers, stickers, they bring me so much joy!
  • Daisies, shining out and waving from roadsides
  • My morning yogurt bowl
  • New devotional read by Eugene Peterson
  • New view from living room, slowly but surely
  • BTS Oreos from kids
  • Deck garden, everything shooting up!
  • Read alouds with kids
  • Sky, green, clouds

So many good little gifts…thank you, Lord 🌿♥️~

Monday Ponderings: Daisies 💛🤍💛🤍 {Day 56}

I love daisies.

You told me.

They’re so friendly. Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?

~ “You’ve Got Mail”, Joe and Kathleen

I went on a daisy walk…

Maybe this will become a June birthday month tradition…

It was SO hot, but I absolutely loved it. My body doesn’t love cold anymore, and the sky, clouds, fragrance of the air was sublime.

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:26-34, NLT

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Wonderful words from web for wandering through … {Day 53}

Sarah shares beautiful reflections on motherhood and our bodies…

Read about gorgeous trees that I love…

Intriguing thoughts on storytelling…

Kim shares her summer plans…

~

Kernel {Day 52}

Jesus replied, “Now the time has come for the Son of Man to enter into his glory. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels-a plentiful harvest of new lives. Those who love their life in this world will lose it. Those who care nothing for their life in this world will keep it for eternity.

John 12:23-25, NLT

Prayer for tonight…Jesus is our True Example. 🙏🏻♥️🌿

May Reading Journal 📖📓 {Day 50}

My cat May decorations ended up being fun!🤩

Reading and journaling bring me so much joy 🥹 so the marriage of the two is a double dose! I don’t really plan, but just go with whatever is inspiring me in my sticker/washi stash. I had a kind of slow start to my reading in the beginning of May, my reading mood was changing, had some meh/ok-ish reads at the start. I pretty much hated Date with Danger! 🤣 The end of the month reading though was amazing! I loved all the Middle Grade reads for a small readathon on Booktube called Middle Grade May! Especially, Secrets of Shakespeare’s Grave and its sequel, Tower of the Five Orders by Deron R. Hicks. I really enjoyed the Christian historical light fantasy, The Huntress, also. Honorable mention goes to The Little House in the Highlands which is based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ancestors. It was a slow start but SO cute! I made some good progress on my newest bingo boards I printed off from Pinterest, also. Georgette Heyer is hit or miss for me, but I loved two of her Regency romances, Arabella and Sylvester. Overall, a great reading month.

What are you reading or creating? 😍♥️

Preparation {Day 48} 🌸

Moonshine 🌖

Every day is a preparation for death. By realizing this, it helps somehow, because we each have to die a little each day. Death is nothing except going back to Him, where He is and where we belong. ♥️

~ Mother Teresa, Do Something Beautiful for God

Deck Delights {Day 46} 🌼🌸🌺

Idlewild season {the name of my deck garden😅} is officially started! I read my Bible with my coffee out there this morning. 😍 Bliss! Have some seeds planted in those big tubs, too! ❣️ We also have four tomato plants and a fern.

I was hoping to plant a huge patch of sunflowers, zinnias, and cosmos, but it may not happen with wedding planning and remodeling. It’s so lovely to have this bit of cheer to enjoy. Grateful. ☺️

Are you planting or growing anything? 😍🌻

Joy of loving 💜🤍💚 {Day 40}

We should ask ourselves, Have I really experienced the joy of loving? True love is love that causes pain, that hurts, and yet brings joy. This is why we pray asking for courage to love, and love more deeply than ever before.

~ Mother Teresa, Do Something Beautiful for God