When Life is a Broken + Beautiful Mashup

Periodically I call a truce with my silent personal war against Facebook and for the sake of the easiest way to share photos with family, I upload lovely pictures of our time together in beautiful places with our beautiful families. Places I love. People I love. Traditions I love.

Being behind the lens helps me capture that which I’m prone to take for granted. My soul craves the snapshots of beautiful moments and soul-stirring places — the low-country Carolina coast in June and the otherworldly greenness of the Michigan summer in July. I binge on these 4 x 6 reminders that my children will have ridiculously amazing memories of cousins and sand and turquoise water that has bathed and buoyed our family at its homestead for over a hundred years.

My soul needs the reminders of beauty because there is a rock-bottomness to July. It happens every summer but you’d never know by looking at the photos.

For me, photos don’t paint a false reality. They simply unveil the gifts in the midst of the mess. If I don’t gaze upon the beauty, I drift toward despair. If I ignore the gifts, I’m prone to shut down in bitterness at the sin and brokenness and complication that is no respecter of place or beauty or persons, that dive-bombs even the most pristine settings and perfect plans and normal familes.

If I got to choose, I’d compartmentalize the good and the bad, the joy and the pain. I’d bask in the beauty and then put on my armor to do battle with the ugly. I would most definitely not entertain them both at the same time or on the same day. Who wants brokenness wrecking up all the beauty?

But no one asked me. So that means that we don’t get to live with our experiences boxed up into tidy compartments, unwrapping each one when we feel ready or fit or in the right mood. We don’t get to do life on parallel tracks, jumping to one or the other but never tangling them up together. We don’t every really get a vacation from hard things.

I’ve told God that it’s too much sometimes.

Having to smile on the outside when your heart is anxious and overwrought on the inside.

Receiving the loveliest gifts of this life when your soul is too heavy to really enjoy them as they should be enjoyed.

Loving people when you also loathe them in any given moment.

Working through gut-level emotional stuff when you feel too weary to stand up to it, let alone work through it.

Appearing serene and confident when you are actually battling fear and intimidation something fierce.

Meeting the challenges and responsibilities of the everyday when circumstances make you want to run away.

We want days that are either / or.

Instead, we get a days that are both / and.

It’s the mashup that’s hard on our souls. The ridiculous volatility. The necessary duplicity. The conflicting emotions. The simultaneous broken + beautiful experiences.

It’s the mashup that threatens to shut me down altogether because my soul doesn’t know where to land and so it just flutters about frantically, searching for peace and consolation.

In times like this, I have to find solitude. For some of us, that’s a necessity and not merely a luxury. Clarity doesn’t come amid noise and people and activity, not for me.

I also have to seek Truth. I have to boss my frantic, fluttering soul about and tell it to land on what’s certain. Truth brings consolation and a measure of rest to my spirit.

And this clarity has a way of seeping into my soul in the form of tiny sermons that I preach to myself.

It’s okay to live in this tension. Jesus lived in this tension and He’s with you in yours.

Solitude is necessary. Isolation is dangerous. You must live in community. Don’t forget that.

Nothing comes into your life that has not been first filtered through the hands of God himself. Rest in his sovereignty. Rest in his love for you. Rest in his goodness, even when you’re overwhelmed by the world’s badness.

You’re tempted to despair, to give up, to give in, to covet, to condemn yourself and condemn others. Don’t fight temptation with your own will. In the end, you’ll lose. Fight it with the Gospel. Jesus overcame for you; therefore you can rest in what He’s already done and continues to do on your behalf.

Perhaps middle-class Americans struggle with this broken + beautiful tension more than other cultures. We think it’s supposed to be all fun, all beautiful, all success, all upward mobility, all happy-clappy posed cuteness and perfection. All the time. And that’s just rubbish. Behind every beautiful family photo is a string of late-night marital fights and job stress and children who don’t always tell the truth and manipulative relationships and a million things that didn’t go as planned.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not still a beautiful family photo. And it especially doesn’t mean it’s not a beautiful family knee-deep in the trenches of possibility and redemption.

We weren’t created for a world and a life that’s a broken + beautiful mashup. It’s why we fight it and run from it and numb it with every distraction under the sun. This mashup goes against our divine DNA. For me, that’s consolation that I’m not crazy. Rather, I’m a person just like every other person who is living between paradise lost and paradise recovered, a person living between the shadows of what was and what is yet to come, a person living in “the mashup middle.”

And so I get to choose. So do you.

A. We can choose to refuse the beauty altogether.

B. We can go the other way and choose to deny that the mess and pain exists and bow down at the one-dimensional altar of happy distraction.

Or we can choose a third way. It’s called acceptance. We can choose to receive the beauty in the midst of the messy relationships and volatile emotions and complicated contexts and stories we wouldn’t have chosen and futures that seem especially uncertain. We can live full anyway.

It comes down to the question I’ve asked myself over and over again in so many of these posts across the years:

Will I choose to receive my own life?

On a whim, I decided to look up the definition of “receive.” I shouldn’t have been surprised by the ironic, three-pronged definition:

1. be given, presented with, or paid (something).

2. suffer, experience, or be subject to (specified treatment).

3. greet or welcome (a visitor) formally.

To receive one’s own life is to live with the both / and tension. It means that we celebrate the obvious gifts of our life and that we also suffer, experience, are subject to, and welcome that which life tosses our way.

{Insert deep sigh.}

This inevitable tension — between that which we welcome and that which we want to kick out the door — it is also an invitation. We can refuse the unwanted characters and story-lines with resentful bitterness. Or we can receive them with reluctant grace…which can even turn into gratitude.

This is the heart of my own story, the one that’s made up of a hundred verses of the same song. It’s not the one I’d have chosen to write in this exact way but it’s the one I can choose to receive anyway. And just when I think I’ve sung every possible verse and can finally close the book, a new but strangely familiar line writes itself onto the page, invited or not. Apparently I am not as far as I thought along the journey of acceptance.

Perhaps this tension / invitation feels true for you too. Perhaps you’re weary and bitter and resentful that brokenness keeps colliding into what should only be beautiful. I get it.

Each day and each season ushers in its bitter and its sweet, often disproportionately. But time has shown me that we can still choose life, even when it’s falling apart. Or even if it’s just tattered around the edges and we’re feeling kind of raggedy about the whole thing.

On the days when you taste far more bitter than you do sweet, hunt down beauty as if your life depends on it. Because in a way, it does.

So grab the camera and shoot. Stick more favorite pics to the front of the fridge. Pick flowers from your yard. Or in my case, pick leafy stems and put them in vases anyway. Slather on your favorite lipgloss. Gaze into well-loved faces. Pinch chubby cheeks. Make delicious food. Or get your favorite takeout. You decide. Go to Starbucks and spring for the venti iced macchiato. Which is the yummiest and prettiest drink of summer.

Do it all anyway. And don’t let brokenness have the last word.

Make your declaration of beauty and goodness and scatter the reminders all about.

There is beauty here. And I choose to see it.

This is my life — untidy, messy, tangled web of joy and sorrow though it is. And I choose to receive it.

P.S. That pretty photo above? I snapped that years ago on a spring day during one of the darkest seasons of my life. It’s one of my favorite reminders that brokenness doesn’t get the last word, that beauty blooms anyway.

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Fighting for Peace When Everyone Else is at the Pool

I would sell my soul for a body of blue, chlorinated water right now. And really, that’s about what I’ve done on any given day recently.

We think it’s usually the big stuff that challenges our faith and wreaks havoc on our contentment. But we’re only a few weeks into summer and I’m learning that anything — anything — can shove you down the slippery slope of woe is me. Even a pool.

Envy, self-pity, discontentment — they can lurk low and unchecked. And then all crazy breaks loose when you least expect it, like a sweet, sleeping mama bear hibernating through the winter and emerging from the cave, mean and ravenous.

I’ve been fighting against gratitude for a while now. To embrace all things, to count the gifts, to see the glass half-full — it feels like I’m waving the white flag of surrender and signing the treaty of acceptance. There have been things, important things and superficial things, that I’ve refused to accept.

Every day there’s this war. I know what I need to do and I see the yuck that’s floating in my soul and flitting about my mind. But my stubborn will keeps fighting. So I stew over it and stay mad about it. Internally I’m flailing and railing because I want someone to give me what I don’t have and someone to blame when they don’t.

From a theological and intellectual standpoint, I understand that no thing or circumstance or person can fulfill my deepest longings. I really do know that. But I don’t always experience that. And I definitely don’t want to embrace that. Embracing and accepting — they feel like giving up and letting go of desires, of the things I must have if I’m going to uncross my arms and unfurrow my brow and get on with living. Giving up feels like making friends with disappointment and failure.

I don’t want to let go of what I want in order to receive what I have.

And I am writing this as someone who is not so much on the other side of this battle but as someone who is still slogging through it.

The objects of my desire change with my season of life and the challenges I face. Essentially, I always have “a list.” A list of the things I don’t have but “need” to have, a list of the circumstances that “need” to change so that I can be content and free and fulfilled.

Right now, there are several items on the list. Some of them are deeply personal and actually important. And then there are the one or five that will just make me sound like a brat. Let’s just go with one of those, shall we?

Marian wants a pool.

I’m not asking for a pool at my house, though that would be fabulous. I just want a convenient and accessible pool for my kids to swim in. A pool with kids for my kids to play with. A pool that’s not plastic and 12 inches deep and sitting in my driveway, bringing down the neighborhood. {See the Exhibit A photo at the top of this post.}

We live in a weird locale that’s 15 miles away from the YMCA pool and 15 miles away from the co-op pool. For various reasons, neither of those are workable for us. Hardly any neighborhoods here have pools, ours included, which is bizarre since it’s warm enough to swim nine months out of the year. And there are no public pools in my entire county. Zero. It’s unlike any place I’ve every lived. It’s like a pool poverty zone. We have several friends or relatives with pools but you obviously need to arrange swims ahead of time and I always feel a little bit like I’m imposing, even if I’m not.

So every day I wake up and think about how I just want to go to the make-believe pool that sparkles in my head and how this pool will carry me away on a cloud of bliss.

With a frozen, fruity drink in my hand.

As Ingrid Michaelson sings all day in the sunshiney background.

And I read in the sun without sunscreen until suppertime because I possess special superpowers against sun damage.

And the bank keeps calling and interrupting my lounge time to say that our checking account is overflowing. Again. And would we like to open up another savings account for the overflow and set up automatic bank drafts to sponsor for 100 more children through Compassion?

The reality is, there are bigger obstacles to my happiness and ease than not having a pool. I promise you that. If my chief worry was not having a pool, I really would be the biggest brat in the universe and someone should burn my blog. I’m a normal person with actual struggles. The pool is just my ridiculous example.

You have your list too, don’t you? We all have our lists. The myriad things that are not okay and pushing us down and keeping us from the wonderfulness we think we should have. Also, my list could sound like a spoiled, dumb, baby problems list compared to your list. I don’t pretend for a second that my list even matters compared to the many other lists out there.

But back to the pool.

I’ve got this theory that maybe we fixate on one thing {or three} that would whisk us away from the legitimate issues on the list. It’s easy to focus on the little saviors in order to distract us from the real issues. For me, right now, it’s the pool. I’m fixing my eyes on the pool and how awesome that would make our summers instead of fixing my eyes on the bedrock truths of what I believe.

This isn’t the part of the post where I tell you and tell myself that I just need to suck it up and look to Jesus because all of my needs are met in Him. Even though that’s true.

It’s the part of the post where I tell you that honestly, I want the set my mind on a pool and more space in our house and less of a commute and other silly stuff on the list more than I want to set my mind on real truth. It’s the part where I tell you that Jesus will probably not buy me the superficial things I want like a community pool or more space in our house. At least not right now. And He may not choose to fix the soul stuff and the relational stuff in the way I wish He would either. Certain broken things may remain broken. Certain insufficiencies may remain insufficient.

And I fight that. Because having the unhaveable and fixing the unfixable — those are really the things I believe will save me right now.

The point is, my saviors are all out of whack.

And this post is mostly my confession of that. And maybe in the confessing, we’ll all find community and consolation, honesty and hope.

The life I have now — the one that’s not measuring up with its kiddie pool and cramped-ness — much of it was at one time the life I dreamed of. The husband, the kids, the house, the fulfilling work, the minivan {well, not the minivan} — these are all gifts that I couldn’t wait to have. Good things that I fixated on at one time in history and just knew that once these good things were in my life, all would be swell.

You know where I’m going with this, right?

There will always be a list. Even if I have a pool or a basement or a van that’s not accessorized with popcorn kernels and fossilized french fries from last year’s summer trip.

And there will always be Truth. For me, that Truth also a Person.

We have to choose. Hold fast to the list? Or hold fast to Jesus?

And lately, I’ve been choosing badly, fixing my eyes on the wrong savior. I love how The Message puts Colossians 3:1-2, the verse that talks about setting our minds on things above.

So if you’re serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is. See things from his perspective.

I’ve got this wadded up list in my clenched hand and it’s yielded nothing but misery, resentment, and envy. It most definitely has not yielded a pool. And I can actually admit that it’s a good thing because if it had, all of this junk in my soul would be flying under the radar and my sanctification would be vacationing in Aruba. And I’ve needed to do business with this junk.

I don’t want to become more like Marian. She’s a bit of a mess. I want to become more like Jesus.

God’s Word is true when it says we can’t serve two masters. Though this passage specifically applies to money, it still begs us to ask the question, What or whom is taking up the most space in my mind and heart? Personally, I’ve been paying lip-service to Jesus but bowing my knees on the hot concrete of the pretend pool and the other pretend saviors on the list.

The real Savior loves me too much to let me worship false gods.

Preoccupation with the the list is idolatry. It’s lovely, even needful, to dream and to wish. It’s wonderful to love beauty. It’s sheer joy to receive the bounty He gives us and to embrace the good things with wild gratitude. It’s hopeful to work toward goals and to say yes to the pursuits that make us come alive. This world is a foretaste of the unimaginable beauty and gifts that will one day be ours in abundance.

The problem is when we reverse the now and the not yet, when we try to live the perfect not yet in the broken now and we neglect the good we’re to pursue now in light of the not yet.

So where do we go from here?

Honestly, I’m reluctant to offer any actionable “steps” because I’m still fighting through this. I’m not an expert and I don’t feel wise enough or steady enough to speak with authority. But these are the practices I’m giving myself to right now so it seems fit to share them.

First, let’s be honest about where we are. Confession is really just honesty, baring the truth within your heart instead of ignoring or hiding or numbing. It’s hard but there’s freedom on the other side and hope that we don’t have to stay stuck in this place.

Let’s ask for new vision to see the junk in our soul for what it is and to see a holy God for who He is and how the two can’t coexist without the mediation and cleansing power of Jesus.

And speaking of Him, let’s ask for new thought patterns that help us fix our eyes on Jesus, the One who meets us wherever we are and shows us that the Gospel applies to everything, even the pool we don’t have. We need new patterns that point us to Jesus, the Real Jesus, the One who may feel like a long-ago abstraction but who is actually so very near and knows all about our misplaced worship and still loves us anyway. But He also loves us too much to allow us to stay mired in misery and idolatry.

For me it looks a little bit like this. When I have visions of blue water and resin lawn chairs, it means running to Jesus for fresh trust and renewed gratitude. When I’m feeling angsty about more space for my family, it means running to Jesus and telling him that I trust his timing and asking Him to please provide what’s best. When I’m tangled up in the knots of the unfixable life and twisting in soul-level stuff that may never be totally unknotted, it means handing it over Jesus, the One who is always beckoning and loving and cleansing and writing straight with crooked lines.

But I’ve lived long enough and failed big enough to realize that sheer discipline falls woefully short, that just writing those words about running to Jesus won’t make me actually do it in the particularly hard moments. Heart-change is not something we can manufacture. But it is something we can yield ourselves to. It means giving up the fight. It means waving the white flag of surrender. I get how painful this can be. It means letting go of the stuff you want but that you don’t have…which really isn’t letting go of anything when you think about it. You know, since you don’t actually have it. It means humility.

It means repentance.

It especially means that. The more I learn about repentance, the more I understand that it means rest. Scripture tells us that in repentance and rest is our salvation. Repentance isn’t what I used to think it meant. It’s not a bootstrapped about-face. It’s not steely resolution. And it’s not because you will only get it right from here to forever. It’s humble acknowledgement that you are a mess and entrusting that mess to the only One who can clean it up and being willing to let Him do it. And this is the sweetest kind of rest for your soul. It’s grace and it’s trust and it changes everything.

Sometimes you to have to sink to a rather pathetic and embarrassing state of misery before you realize that this is no good way for anyone to live. Sometimes it’s misery that brings you to repentance.

And sometimes you realize that you need this kind of rest and freedom more than you need the temporary bliss of the sparkling pool.

Gratitude, acceptance, trust, contentment — these are gifts and graces that more firmly take root and actually bear fruit because of the dreaded “d” word that I am loathe to embrace. Discipline. Renewed thought patterns don’t usually just show up. If I’m going to walk in Truth, I have to stay steeped in Truth. That means I can’t neglect time in the Word and in prayer and in worship and fellowship.

I’m coming to see discipline in a gentler sense rather than in a graceless, military sort of sense. Over time, practicing Truth by meditating on it and pursuing it becomes a familiar pathway to peace, a well-worn daily path instead of an overgrown, uphill trail.

For me, the prize is freedom, the freedom to receive with joy the life that I’ve been given. Yes, the life with all of its ostensible shortcomings and imperfections and unfixable parts. The one with the plastic pool. The one that is making me more resourceful in the art of squinting and searching and scraping for the hidden gifts that are ours to find and unwrap.

I don’t know what’s on your list, what’s keeping you in the fight instead of waving the white flag of surrender. But I’m learning to see the white flag as a different sort of symbol, as the white flag of freedom.

It’s when we finally give up so that we can really live.

Life may not be what you’d envisioned. You’ll likely still struggle with the list. That’s okay. The dailyness of the struggle is the thing that invites discipline. {Though my word-sensitive self still prefers “practice” instead of discipline.}

Though your pathway may not lead to a pool, it can lead you to the place of receiving your own life. And this kind of acceptance is a sweeter thing than simply crossing something off the list and resting in a pretend savior.

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Just this week, I’m made a new list. A list with frugal and free ideas and pursuits that can create a meaningful summer for the kids and me. Acceptance and repentance have renewed my resourcefulness and I’m actually looking forward to some of our simple plans. We’ll see how that plays out and maybe in a few weeks that will be a post all its own.

So do you have a list? And is there anything as embarrassing as a pool?

Also, just when I think I can’t get any more random — blue water and Ingrid Michaelson and fruity drinks and Jesus, all swimming around in the same post. I’m not sure how that happened.

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Treat Yourself: Goodies for your Weekend {6.21.14 edition}

Hello Summer readers. I hope these lazier days find you poolside {even if it’s just a kiddie pool in your driveway} and with something fizzy and cold in your hand. I hope you have a stack of books and magazines at your disposal and the relief of nap-time if there are little ones in your house.

Here are a few goodies for your weekend.

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We had some long-time friends stop by this week for a visit on their way to the beach. They brought these cookies with them to share. My friend left the giant tupperware filled with the leftover cookies at our house. They were gone in a day. I’m still grieving the loss. These cookies are AMAZING even if you’re not a huge s’mores fan.

{I’m not sure what recipe my friend used but this one looks like it.}

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This podcast on The Art of Simple that’s all about the Enneagram.

I love the Enneagram. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a personality test like no other and it’s been around for centuries. It was sort of life-changing for me when I went through it about five years ago. Tsh’s podcast with Leigh Kramer is a great primer if you’ve never heard of the Enneagram and you’re curious.

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I added a new widget to the blog that’s all about books. “Widget” is computery language for ad or gadget or cute little something on one’s website.

It’s a “On My Bookshelf” widget over there on the right. {If you’re reading this on a phone or in a reader, my apologies — you won’t see it.} Books are one of my favorite things to dish about. And I’ve always got a pile of them on my nightstand. And in my van. And crammed into my purse. And on my end tables. And on my iPhone’s Kindle app.

Anyway, I love to know what people are reading and people seem to ask me what I’m reading so I thought I’d make it simple and just put my current books in the sidebar. Plus amazon has this nifty little widget to make it simple. By the way, I’ve kept booklists all the way back to 2009 so if your’e curious, just click on the booklists tab at the top of the blog. Or click here if you don’t want to scroll up.

Full disclosure: book links are amazon affiliate links. That means that if you click the links and make a purchase, I get a teensy commission. But I’d link to books and dish about them for free. In fact, I did that for years until someone said, “Why don’t you use affiliate links?” I had no clue what she was talking about. Currently I earn a whopping $14 every three months from my amazon links. What can I tell you, I’ve always have a knack for choosing high-income professions — history professor, homeschool mom, writer who earns 15 cents a day from amazon.

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My husband was scrolling through The Wall Street Journal yesterday morning when he started laughing and said, “I found the perfect thing for you. It’s called ‘The Privacy Pod.'” A Japanese father of two young boys invented this tiny retreat so that a parent could find a silent place to restore his or her sanity.

This man is a genius. Except I would totally call it “The Escape Pod.” Actually I’d call it “The Escape Pod for Rich People” because it costs $7,000. Or maybe “The Escape Pod for Rich People Who Are Not Claustrophobic.”

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So on that note, I give you this photo of my dog taking refuge under my bed. {Gah! I’m now one of those people.}

It’s an appropriate photo of our first real week of summer because Jetta is the World’s Most Extroverted Dog but even she is so overwhelmed by all children all the time doing all the loud things transition into summer that she’s hiding under my bed in an effort to get her wits about her.

That pretty much sums up my week. A lot of kids. A lot of noise. A lot of wondering if there’s room for two under my bed.

I forget that it’s like this every summer as we all adjust to being home together. But it’s also been awesome as we’ve enjoyed the gifts we love so much about summertime — sleep, books, watching movies, eating lunch whenever we want, finishing Book 6 of Harry Potter together, playing with friends in the neighborhood, and heading out to the lake to swim and picnic and soak up the sun.

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And speaking of summer and all the kids, I plan to post about once a week this summer — some soulful posts as well as some light posts {like this one.}

This much-needed break called summer vacation is about a slower pace, spontaneity, travel, and togetherness. I’m still writing and planning and pursuing the writerly life but it’s nice to not have the pressure to publish here every few days and to realign my priorities while my kids are at home.

Enjoy your weekend. Enjoy these summer days. Enjoy s’mores cookies. And by all means, enjoy a siesta under the bed if that’s what you need to do. You know I won’t judge.

How are you and yours faring this summer? What are your favorite summer treats?

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8 Things I Learned on the First Day of Summer

It’s only the second real day of summer for us. My kids finished school week before last but we bolted for the beach right after that. Yesterday was our first day of everyone at home without a schedule or any sort of slated responsibility and I’m here to tell you, it felt a little cuckoo. I’m all for freedom and lazy days and making the most of summer but I need to get my wits about me. That means I’ll be posting my third annual Summer Snack List and “Mom, I’m Bored” Lists on the fridge. Stat.

Here’s what I’ve learned about summer so far. Yes, in only one day.

1. I wake up wondering what I can paint white. Last summer I painted scores of picture frames, shelves, a mirror, and kitchen chairs. All white. And then yesterday rolled around and what started as a simple rearrangement and organization of the boys’ room somehow ended up with me in the garage whitewashing a monstrous black bookshelf and dodging wasps.

2. My kids want a popsicle every 15 minutes.

3. I will not survive without a caffeinated beverage each afternoon. Sweet tea and Coke Zero Vanilla are my current go-to cold drinks.

4. If there are pop-tarts in the house, I will eat them. Because it was vacation, I bought the 48-count frosted pop-tarts from Costco. This morning I inexplicably woke up at 4 am and guess what I couldn’t stop thinking about? Foil-wrapped fake pastries. And so I gobbled up frosted strawberry deliciousness in the dark. While driving to the gym.

5. It’s best to just kiss the blow dryer goodbye for the next three months because this is what happened when I fixed my hair nice and pretty for family beach photos in 96% humidity. Forty-five minutes I spent on this hair only to fall prey to the low-flow shower head hairdo.

6. Summer rolls around and I instantly feel inspired to make stuff. Except dinner. I’ve been lighting up Pinterest like the 4th of July these last few days. Here are a few fun things that I’d like to try and create here at home, maybe with the kiddos…or maybe not.

Faux Metal Letters

Watercolor Illustration {I like the idea of abstract watercolor flowers with ink-drawn details}

Watercolor Letters

7. Lower the standards. And then lower them again. Yesterday around dinner time my youngest asked if he could watch Nacho Libre. It’s become a family favorite with it’s spiritual leanings and profound dialogue. I thought of a dozen constructive things I could have him do but they involved supervision and thoughtfulness and patience and those things had already expired by noon. So I said yes and the next thing I knew the movie had pulled the other two kids from the far corners of our tiny house like a tractor beam and we were all laughing and repeating lines:

They think I do not know a buttload of crap about the Gospel, but I do!

Ok. Orphans! Listen to Ignacio. I know it is fun to wrestle. A nice piledrive to the face… or a punch to the face… but you cannot do it. Because, it is in the Bible not to wrestle your neighbour.

See how intentional and awesome my mom skills are with our discussions of the Gospel and the Bible? And it’s only the first day of summer. High five.

8. It really is a good idea to keep your Bible handy. Seriously. After the craziness of the last weeks of school and a week of vacationy off-schedule wonderfulness, I was feeling unanchored and snappy and restless, kind of like how I feel when I don’t eat real food. God’s Word is my food and when I don’t eat from it richly and regularly, it shows.

My husband and I are working through the Book of Ruth this summer in our Sunday School class and with each other at home but I needed something for myself. So I embarked on a summer study of the book of Hebrews. {Apparently it is kind of a hard book. Who knew?} Already, my outlook is different because my thoughts are more focused on Jesus and my heart is more trusting in his provision and bigness.

Summer is the loveliest time to take a vacation from our schedules and school-year stresses. But it’s such a needful time to stay grounded in Truth, especially with all of the 24 / 7 togetherness this introverted mom is clumsily adjusting to.

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So that’s what I’ve got after just one day of summer. I’m off to pull the snack lists from the archives and restore a bit of order to this band of movie-watching, pop-tart eating, not-sleeping-in summer pirates.

If you’re in full-on summer mode, what have you learned so far? What survival tips can you share with the rest of us? Please, I’m begging you — share the knowledge.

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Treat Yourself: Goodies For Your Weekend {6.7.14 edition}

Happy weekend friends! Yesterday was the last day of school for my kiddos which means today is the first day of summer. Bring on the ice-cream, kiddie pools, and People magazines.

Here are a few reads and treats to make your weekend a bit sweeter:

How to Prepare for Parenthood in 11 Easy Steps. I laughed until I cried. As a mom who has survived the baby years and toddler years three times over, this is 100% true and awesome and laugh your face off funny. {I made the mistake of reading this in my van while drinking a chocolate milkshake.} The author of this post has apparently written a book called The Honest Toddler. Where were these funny parents when I was raising my own wee toddlers and in desperate need of a good laugh {and a margarita?}

Kate DiCamillo’s Summer Treehouse Reading List. So I mentioned Ms. DiCamillo in my last post and then my sister-in-law asked me if I’d seen this. I’m taking this list with me to the library.

I’m still wasting time taking Buzzfeed quizzes. This week I found out that my name should actually be Darlene.

The QT chocolate milkshake. It’s the best. Trust me. Nothing about this tastes like a gas station milkshake — especially the Ghirardelli chocolate and whipped cream.

And because it’s the first day of summer, let’s continue with the ice-cream theme. For any of you in the Ft. Worth area, treat yourself and visit Melt FW.

{source}

My friend Kari opened up a farm-to-cone ice cream shop and every time she posts on Instagram {@meltfw} I want to hop on a plane and fly to Texas. Kari and three other college girls used to sit in my living room on Sunday nights while we drank coffee and talked about God and made our way through a book study. {While taking a lot of needful rabbit trails about boys and future plans and girl-drama.} Many years later, I hold those Sunday nights with those girls close to my heart. Kari is an artist of a dozen shades and I couldn’t be more proud of her.

And last but not least, a photo treat from my family to yours.

My littlest guy. Surfing in the kiddie pool that sits in our driveway. I die. He just graduated from kindergarten so these days of having little regard for things like class and inhibition and scale are surely numbered. I savor every moment of his shenanigans.

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I’ll be taking the next week off while I hang with my family and eat a lot of homemade ice-cream and sleep late and soak up an abundance of sunshine. But I’ll be back.

Have a happy June weekend! What are your favorite ways to treat yourself this summer?

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On the blog this past week

Motherhood & Milestones {for the mom whose kids are growing up too fast}

6 Things I Learned in May

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Milestones & Motherhood {for the mom whose kids are growing up too fast}

Just a few short years ago, she couldn’t sit still during church if her life depended on it. But last Sunday, I glanced over at her copious notes neatly written in an array of colored ink during the sermon and I smiled. Here she is, age thirteen, with her various journals for Sunday morning and youth group and such. I never told her to take notes nor did I teach her how. Notes and journals and the need to make meaning of things, they just sort of showed up on the scene somewhere in the years between Polly Pocket and Instagram.

It’s been two years since I packed her lunch. I simply keep the pantry stocked and she does the rest, slicing her strawberries with meticulous precision and pouring the goldfish into the purple and turquoise container and making sure her yogurt sits right on top of the cooler pack. I made PB & Js for what felt like a lifetime but I can’t remember the last time I smeared peanut butter on a slice of bread for her.

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Last night the littlest guy — the one finishing kindergarten this week — loaded the dishwasher after dinner. I rinsed the dishes and handed the drippy forks and plates to him while he figured out the best arrangement. {Like a boss I might add.} He told us that if we need something done around here, just ask him — “President Business.” I’m not making that up.

Several months ago he quit calling us “Mommy” and “Daddy.” And just like that we became “Mom” and “Dad” to the baby of the family. It’s just not right. How does a child pack a lifetime’s worth of growing up into one short year?

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While I fixed dinner last night, the middle one — he’s ten — watched the news with his dad and I observed him talking with animated hands and using phrases like “The Obama Administration” and “foreign policy” and I’m thinking to myself, Who is this small-statured adult living in my house and who gave him permission to grow up anyway?

I recalled how he used grown-up words when he was two. Only he never got them quite right. “Blackberry Cobbler” was “Laspberry Coster.” Still, he tossed around these big words with all the authority and ease his munchkin toddler voice could muster. And then I blinked and he was on stage last week competing in the school spelling bee.

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Exactly one year from now {not that I’m wishing for it}, I’ll have a rising high schooler, a rising middle schooler, and a rising second-grader. Surely this is impossible because wasn’t I still changing diapers just a few months ago and nursing ’round the clock and teaching my now-teenager how to write her name and hold her pencil correctly?

Such is the lament of mothers everywhere who bring their babies home, survive the bleary-eyed preschool years, and then sprint like mad after the supersonic train carrying their wee ones into the future far more quickly than they’d agreed upon.

I’ve always been a wreck over milestones. I cry at the end of each school-year. I cry at birthdays. I blame it on the fact that I’m a historian by training so it’s natural for me to cling tightly to all things of the past and to forge fierce connections between our yesterdays and our todays. But regardless of why, I’m just nostalgic and sentimental at my core, a saver of everything from first-date movie tickets to All The Art Made With Small Hands. I often wish I wasn’t like this because it’s rather inconvenient, not to mention hoarder-ish.

But the years literally feel like they are sprinting past me and for whatever reason, I’m compelled to commemorate the milestones and preserve the artifacts that point to the beauty and evidence of our lives. If I can’t love and remember and learn from our everyday life together, I feel like I’ve stopped short.

I have to live and then I re-live. {This is the blessing and the curse of being a writer.}

Remembering days gone by and honoring the transitions of new chapters helps me savor the gifts of today.

It’s easy to wish for a bit more time in the past. It’s just as easy to fret over the future. I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to live in both of those places, often at the expense of today.

It’s okay to get weepy over the passage of the baby’s kindergarten year. It’s also okay to anticipate the adventures and opportunities that await these growing-up-too-fast kids in the coming years. But I don’t want to miss the realness of today because my mind is camped out in yesterday or tomorrow.

As this school year ends and the fresh slate of a new summer begins, I simply want to notice and to be present — to acknowledge the inevitable changes of stretched-out legs and too-small Crocs and conversations with my kids that are decidedly more adult than last summer’s conversations.

But instead of grieving the growing-up, I long to be thankful for it.

I want to breathe in our days together and breathe out gratitude.

This passage of time, this marking of years, this wild and wonderful everyday — it is all as it should be and I am here, receiving the gift of watching it all unfold.

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6 Things I Learned in May

It’s time to share the things we learned in May. The What We Learned posts are hosted by Emily Freeman as a “monthly community link-up to share the fascinating, ridiculous, sacred, or small.” Mine is usually just ridiculous. Want to know more of what I’m talking about? Go here. {And you really must click over because this month there’s a picture of what Barbie would look like without make-up. We are changing the world with these posts, people.}

In no particular order, here are things I’ve learned in May.

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1. May is the month of dumb. I don’t even know why I’m writing Things I “Learned” in May because if ever there is a month when the wheels simply fall off altogether, surely it is May. I’ve lost my keys and my wallet multiple times this month, I cannot remember basic words when trying to talk {or write}, I almost forgot my own birthday, a certain child has left a lunchbox at home three times this month even though said child has remembered it all year, and then another child left their backpack — their backpack — at home today. It should be noted that the kindergartener forgets nothing. He should totally be running the show because the rest of us are clueless.

And all of this cluelessness can only mean one thing: school needs to be done. We have 3 full days and 2 half days left. Amen and hallelujah. I’m reminded of this Jen Hatmaker post from last year: Worst End of School Year Mom Ever. There’s a reason that post went viral — because it’s 100% true. Mrs. Hatmaker hit the nail on the head.

We are limping, limping across the finish line, folks. I tapped out somewhere in April and at this point, it is a miracle my kids are still even going to school.

I couldn’t agree more. Dear Summer, please give us our brains back.

2. Fiction is good for the soul. Throughout the fall and winter, I was on a steady diet of serious books. Good books, helpful and instructional, insightful books, but not fiction. Maybe this is part of the reason my brain gave out this spring — too much thinking and introspection. I enjoy good and thoughtful fiction; I’m not a fan of fluffy reads with contrived dialogue. But there’s just something about story that’s renewing. In May I’ve devoured The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls {which is actually a memoir but reads like fiction}, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and I’m making my way through The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton. Oh and I’m finishing up The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo with my littlest guy. {It’s such an exquisite, heart-wrenching, redemptive story. DiCamillo is one of my favorites. She has that rare gift of being able to weave the deepest of truths into the most beautiful children’s stories.}

3. Modern Mrs. Darcy has a fantastic Summer Reading Guide.

It’s her third annual guide and there’s something for most anyone I think. I appreciate that she breaks the list down into genres with a little blurb about each book. These lists are gold. I’m not affiliated with Modern Mrs. Darcy in any way; I’m simply a fan.

4. Stephen King wrote the story that was adapted into The Shawshank Redemption. Did you know this? I can’t believe I didn’t know this because Shawshank is one of my all-time favorite movies. My husband told me that last week and I immediately scribbled it down, thinking to myself “Oh this will be perfect to share in the next Things I Learned post.” The original story is a novella entitled Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. It’s part of a collection of stories in Different Seasons. Now I’ve got to read the novella. {Also? I love the word “novella.”}

5. There are almost always options for the frustrations and “roadblocks” we face in our homes.

I wrote two posts this month about home-improvement hacks that actually worked, even though I was way skeptical. I’ve had a lot of trial and error and hilarity in my efforts over the years to feather my nest creatively and affordably. I’ve cussed at Modge Podge and hot glued things directly to the ceiling and used everything from a high heel to an ice-cream scoop to pound nails into my walls. I’ve experienced epic fails and accidental successes.

The stories of the sofa that won’t die and making one gigantic rug out of two pathetic ones are some recent hacks gone right, accidental successes that inspire me to embrace the supposed limitations.

6. Scientists have invented a Drinkable Book.

Have you seen this?!? I came across it on Ann Voskamp’s blog last weekend and at first I thought it wasn’t real. How could this possibly be real? But it’s totally a thing and one of the most amazing inventions I’ve ever seen — life-saving, world-changing, hope-inspiring innovation. If you haven’t seen this, you must.

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Perhaps May isn’t as void of brain activity as I thought. This post proves that I am, in fact, still learning things…even if I’m forgetting other things at a far more rapid pace than I’m learning new things.

Your turn. What cool, awe-inspiring, or ridiculous things did you learn in May?

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*book links are amazon affiliate links

The Non-Guru’s Guide: How to Make a Room-Size Rug out of Two Wimpy Rugs {without sewing}

Here’s the story. Our dog threw up on my favorite rug we’ve ever owned. {Raise your hand if you’re inspired to decorate your home now.} The rug wasn’t that expensive but because I got it on a mega-sale, it wasn’t exactly replaceable. The bygone rug was lush and shaggy and hid a multitude of sins. Except for canine vomit. Because even if one could hide that and clean it really well, I’d still be suspicious of what lurked within the fibers. Nonetheless, we’d planned to steam-clean it. But then it began raining soon after my husband draped it over the rail of the deck…and continued to rain for days. Between the rain-soaked rug and the canine yuck, I bid my perfect rug farewell and lived with a naked floor.

With an open floor plan, three kids, a dog, and no rug, the living area felt like a constant game of bumper cars — minus the fun and laughter. Furniture scooted all over the place and the entire room felt unanchored. I would straighten things back up only to have it wonky five minutes later.

While visiting family, I stopped at Ikea and purchased two rugs for $20 each — one for the foyer and one for the living room. They were better than nothing.

Except that they weren’t.

Nothing might have been better after all. Alas, the rugs were too small. Neither one was large enough for the space and Ikea is rather far away for a $40 return. So we just lived with them for a couple of months and I wished that I could somehow meld the two rugs together and make one giant rug for the living room.

Monday I finally quit wishing and got my motivation on. WHY NOT put these two rugs together? I have nothing to lose. If it works, I’m a genius rug hacker. If it doesn’t, I’m back where I started. But these pathetic wimpy rugs are sliding all over the place and the furniture is sliding all over the place and also they look like tiny Barbie rugs on this sprawling floor.

Guess what? It worked. And now you too can be in on my hackerly secrets.

1. I vacuumed both sides of the rug. This is actually the underside.

{Warning: All of my pictures are sideways and blurry. Technology hates me.}

2. I searched for some heavy-ish fabric in the attic and returned with one leg of denim from an old pair of jeans. What, you don’t have hacked-off pants legs just sitting around?

3. I ripped the denim into long strips about 3 or 4 inches wide.Then I lined the rugs up side by side and sat on them.

4. I plugged my hot glue gun into an extension cord and zig-zagged liberal amounts of hot glue across the “seam” where the two rugs met. Then I quickly pressed the denim strip on top of the glue, working about an inch at a time. It took about 30 minutes.

Because these are $20 rugs, there were a few places where the edges of the two rugs didn’t come all the way together. I guess the edges aren’t a perfect line. The gap isn’t really noticeable though, especially when you put the furniture back on it and with the gray underside of the denim almost the same color as the rugs. {A happy accident.} Besides, this isn’t about having a rug fit for a fancy magazine shoot. It’s about having a rug that meets our needs.

I think this would work even better with two high-pile rugs and it would actually look like it’s one huge piece. I’m a fan of fluffy shag rugs and I think the fluffy-ness would blend two rugs together without even noticing the seam.

Maybe we’ll start a trend, joining same-style rugs together in hot-glued matrimony.

So there you have it. A 8.8 foot x 13 foot rug for $40. I’m rather thrilled about the invention.

It appears to be sturdy and secure but time will tell. After I finished I realized that there might be an even easier solution: duct tape. I’m totally serious. Slap on several long strips and double them up. Done. As a girl who hails from the South, I can testify that duct tape works miracles.

So, what’s your favorite home hack?

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Interested in more home hacks for the non-guru?

Why Every Mama Needs an Office and How to Make Your Own {no matter how small the space}

Bookcase Bling

Dresser Turned Entertainment Center

Anatomy of a Gallery Wall

And for the best inspiration on making the most of the home you have now, you’ll love this book. It’s the most encouraging, hilarious, practical source I’ve ever read on embracing real beauty — imperfections, limitations, and all.

The Nesting Place: It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful

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*all book links are amazon affiliate links.

When Hope Swoops In and Unties the Knots {Or — The Cure for a Week of Doom}

It was a week in which I only wrote one post. About a sofa. And now it’s a Saturday and I’m writing a serious post and not a fun Saturday post with weekend treats. What’s going on?

Behind the scenes there’s been an abundance of angst and crazy and stress. You’re probably thinking, Oh Marian, that’s because it’s the end of the year and you have children and all. May is always like this, silly girl!

That would be a logical guess. And it’s true. But I’ll be honest with you — all of the crazy? It was mine. All mine. I get to own all of it and it’s rather humiliating and ridiculous because I’m a grown-up. I should know better. I do know better. But sometimes emotions + circumstances + a hard heart + spiritual apathy + other stuff that I won’t mention equals complete and utter ugly. If you saw me this week, you would probably assume that everything was just fine. But behind the scenes, we had the kind of ugly that you pray the Lord will erase from your children’s memories.

This morning my husband and I were talking. He was telling me about this strange dream he had in which he was at an amusement park and a ride that was supposed to go briefly under water {while everyone was strapped in with knotted ropes} sunk to the bottom. It came back up to the top but he realized that it was going to go back down and stay there, that they would all drown unless someone intervened. He took a huge deep breath when they came back up and told himself to remain calm while he unknotted the ropes with the last of his breath and pushed the platform up through the surface of the water before everyone drowned.

I said to him, Well that’s really weird. Because I had a dream that I boarded a bus that was going to purposely drive off a cliff to the doom of all the passengers. I got onto the bus knowing this. It was awful.

We talked about dreams and how you’re not supposed to analyze the details but rather how the dream makes you feel. Often it’s an indicator of what’s going on in your real life. I laughed and said, We both had dreams that we were on a sinking ship {or bus in my case.} We both had terrifying, doomsday dreams. How appropriate.

My husband’s response surprised me. I didn’t feel terrified or that I was on a sinking ship. We were all going to die and I saved everyone’s life. I felt like a hero.

The irony made me smile but it was also significant. Who was calm? Who was the hero? Not me, that’s who. I was not sane. I was freaking out. We were all going to die and I wanted to live after all! But instead of trying to save the day, I got hysterical and cried a lot. {And also? I was putting on make-up. On the bus of doom. But that’s probably a dream analysis for another day.} The point it, my dream was a nightmare. I had no hope of survival.

And that’s an appropriate summary of real-life things. I’m freaking out about quite a lot and my husband takes deep breaths and unties the knots that keep me from drowning. It’s not always pretty. Sometimes he unties the knots by telling me the truth I don’t want to hear. Sometimes he unties the knots by meeting everyday needs even though no one is doing a single thing to meet his everyday needs. And sometimes he unties the knots by listening to me when I text him about my crazy state and replying with this:

It is okay. I have been there. I forgive you. We are all sinners in need of grace. I am convinced there is no normal. Only perceived normal. We are all truly unique. I love you just the way you are right now. Just like I loved the girl who threw a rock through my window.

{By the way, that girl with the rock? She was me. In college. He should have known what he was getting into.}

And because I have to tell the truth, we have fought like nobody’s business this week. I’ve been unbearable. That sweet exchange I just quoted — it’s not because we’re skipping arm in arm through a bed of roses, gazing into each other’s eyes and smiling. A better analogy would be tripping through a path of thorns, glaring into one another’s faces and spitting daggers. {Full disclosure: I did most of the spitting.}

Some weeks are just ugly. At times it’s okay to shake off the dust, bury the carnage, and forge ahead. Other times, it’s best to put on your truth goggles and dig until you get to the bottom of the mess. I’m still digging and sifting and wincing at what I see. It’s going to be a process.

But there’s one thing I already know.

I had lost my Hope.

Every last bit of it. There are several legitimate reasons for the loss but it’s enough to say this — I slowly allowed the air leak out of the balloon until I was completely and utterly deflated. When we don’t have Hope, we’re left with one alternative. Despair. It’s the worst place to be but when you’re there, you can’t snap out of it. You can’t resolve to get it together or think better thoughts. Sometimes you can’t even cling to Truth because you’re not sure you believe it.

Sometimes it takes forces outside of yourself to pull you out.

It takes Grace showing up on the scene. She shows up in the words of a husband who loves you anyway, rock-throwing and all. She shows up in a bit of extra sleep, in a good sweat at the gym even though you didn’t want to go, in a chocolate milkshake from QT. She shows up in the hilarious things your kids say and in the sweetness of their freshly-bathed faces. She shows up in the sunrise of a new day and in the release that comes from crying all. week. long. She shows up with a soothing voice that whispers over your shoulder,

Honey, you’re going to be okay. There are hard things. There is heavy baggage. You’re afraid and feel crushed under the weight of Too Much and the fear of Not Enough. It feels like certain realities will never change. Be grateful for what is right in front of you {especially the freshly-bathed faces.} I know you haven’t been able to cling to Truth but can’t you see? Truth clings to you, even when you’ve lost your grip on Truth. God is faithful, even when you’re faithless. And you’d be wise to consider your own words about receiving your own life, challenging as that seems right now. This is your song. Sing it. Or at the very least, try to hum along.

Oh and here’s your Hope back. You’re welcome. It’s dim and fragile right now but the more you look at it, the brighter it becomes. Don’t take your eyes off the Hope.

So that’s where I sit on this Saturday morning in May. {And if you’re wondering, yes, I am writing this while sitting on The Sofa That Won’t Die.} Nothing has really changed except for the arrival of Hope and Grace on the scene. And while I may not be soaring like a hot air balloon above the horizon, I am no longer lifeless and deflated. Air is slowly pumping back in instead of steadily leaking out.

Am I weary and discouraged? Yes.

Concerned? Of course.

Afraid? Still.

Angry? To be honest, yes.

Steady and sure? Not at all.

But Hope has breezed in with her sweet and sneaky ways — propping me up, showing me the gifts, replacing fear with love and exchanging laughter for tears.

Today nothing is tidy or fixed or resolved. But there is Hope. And my heart slowly swells with possibility.

Wherever you sit this weekend, may Hope breeze in and be the companion that sits beside you.

The Sofa That Won’t Die

Remember how I finally got a “new” sofa? Remember how I said that it was time to say goodbye to the gross, off-white-turned-beige dilapidated one with the ripped cushions that has served us well for 12 years?

This sofa won’t let me quit her.

After multiple listings on Craigslist and putting it on a local yard sale page and accidentally posting the wrong photos, I finally gave up. The old sofa didn’t seem worth the trouble.

And this was just fine with my family because they were near tears about letting the old girl go. They all begged me not to get rid of her.

Why can’t we have two sofas?

It doesn’t look that bad.

It doesn’t matter that we have to climb over the old one to get through the living room to the hallway. It’s fun!

And I am thinking to myself and sometimes muttering out loud, I cannot even enjoy my new sofa because it sits in all of its crisp, white, slipcovered glory next to this beastly old greige one!

The day of reckoning with this sofa finally arrived last Friday. My daughter had a friend coming over and I was well aware that I needed to have things looking spiffy because she is thirteen and very much concerned about appearances. By the time I was ready to do some quick cleaning, I realized I had exactly 30 minutes to figure out a solution for this sofa.

Panic and perspiration ensued.

There was no way I could get that beast down the hallway by myself and into one of the bedrooms without removing doors from hinges and punching holes through the walls!

There was no way I could leave it where it was!

My resourcefulness had finally met its match!

Get a hold of yourself woman, I said to myself through clenched teeth. There is always, ALWAYS an option. Do NOT let this sofa win. No matter how many times you’ve reconfigured this room over the last eight years, there has to be a place for this nasty sofa. Never mind the fact that it’s the size of a small bus.

So I huffed and puffed and dragged that sofa into the bay window area. Yes, the place where we eat our meals. The place where normal people put wooden chairs. I moved the kitchen table over and anchored the rug under the front feet of the sofa. Two kitchen chairs got the boot and found a new home in the attic, while the sofa with nine lives found a new home in the area I now affectionately refer to as “The Lounge.”

It’s ridiculous.

It is surely not permanent.

It delights my family to no end.

My daughter told me that we need to leave it like this forever and her sweet friend asked me if I was an interior designer. What?!?

I have to admit, it is kind of fun and cushy and loungey and I want to take a nap after every meal.

The good news is that I don’t have to worry about kids getting it dirty because it is already 50 Shades of Greige. {That one just came to me while typing. High five.}

My boys think it makes a fine place to build a ship on Saturday mornings.

Whether the sofa stays with us forever or not, I’m reminded of a lesson that I’m quick to forget. There is almost always a new way to see a room or a piece of furniture. Problems can be the gateway to creative opportunities. {Once I even flipped a rug upside down.}

The Nester calls them “Lovely Limitations.” In fact, her new book has an entire chapter devoted to this subject and I must admit that I pictured her perched upon my shoulder and cheering me on as I turned our eating area into a lounge.

I’ll keep you posted on the state of the sofa. She is turning into a glory hog and I think she secretly loves that I’ve written yet another post about her. She’ll be wanting her own reality show and feature film before we know it. {Sofas Gone Wild? The Secret Lives of Sofas? Slumdog Sofa?}

Whatever happens with her, I have a feeling she is far from finding her final resting place.

To be continued…

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*book link is an amazon affiliate link