Create, play, nourish, read, curate and grow

Made to live for so much more and other ways to toast my 40th birthday.

In a private conversation I want to treasure in my heart, my husband told me he thinks I am a [redacted adjectives] person, but that I don’t exhibit those qualities anymore. Authenticity is one of my core values¹, and my husband’s comments resonated with me. I began to think about who I am intrinsically that is not manifesting in my life right now.

I am a creative person. I want to write a book, keep memories, and create art that makes me happy. I don’t want to return to the teenager who spilled rubber cement on her bedspread while making collages for the plastic sleeve of her poetry notebook, but I do want to channel her. I want to create.

I am a nature lover. I come from garden tramping, raspberry picking, outdoor kitchen in the forest, and swimming in the creek. So much of my early writing captured my love for the national forests in the front and back yards I grew up with. In adulthood, we have yet to even have a yard, and I’ve let this obstacle steal my love for the outdoors. I want to play.

I am a nourisher. Food and food-related blogs, books, and celebrities are my favorite, but I feel low-energy and uninspired in the kitchen. It’s not for lack of time. I want to nourish others.

I am an avid and diverse reader. Lately I only read a few kinds of books: memoir, spiritual self-help, and women’s fiction. But I used to read widely and joyfully. I want to read widely.

I am a person with scrupulous taste in art and media. I am a museum person, living near a Global museum mecca, and I almost never go. I admire content creators, and the first ones I followed 12 years ago still influence me today. I have Loré Pemberton² art and Little Things Studio³ prints on my walls because of Instagram. Joy Prouty set the standard for good family photos. The Nester taught me not just everything I know, but everything I put into practice in decorating. Some of my favorite authors write mini essays on Instagram that I devour, and those essays are the reason I buy their books. I wouldn’t have found Taking Route Blog and the Exhale Community and possibly even Charlotte Mason if it weren’t for Instagram. But lately the algorithm is suggesting content I only kind of like. Where they used to be unique personalities, now content creators are a dime a dozen, and unfortunately, sometimes it feels like shopping at the corner bazar. I wouldn’t buy the ingredients for an authentic paella at that corner market, so I’ve got to stop consuming media from the social media equivalent. I want to curate my media consumption.

I want to be a person of prayer. 2024, by God’s grace, I have kept my daily Bible habit. I am proving to myself that I can change my habits. I want to be a person of more prayer, more thoughtfulness, more meditation and memorization. So, I’ve set some new limits on social media for myself. It has become exhausting to discern the faithful from the deconstructing⁴, the edifiers from the dividers. Any person is welcome at my dining room table, but I have to be too careful about what I consume on my phone. Too many people have a voice in my life from outside my actual life, and I think it’s turning me into someone I don’t want to be. I want to grow.

I looked a few old photos to see if I could find this person I’ve always been.

I’m this uninhibited person, barefoot in the grass in front of the vintage blue Ford and the azaleas planted when I was a baby, about to graduate from college with a degree in journalism, and losing my grandpa to cancer. Those two events happened the same week in 2005; I know how to carry joy and sorrow at the same time.

I’m the one on the left in the oversized green jacket, experiencing my first trip to France with classmates, making memories and recording them in scrapbooks.

I’m this giddy, adventurous person who first honed her Spanish in Resistencia, Argentina for six weeks as an exchange student. How I miss that denim jacket I bought there. I lost it at a church on prefield somewhere.

This is how I look when I open gifts, even gifts for babies.

This gal exhibits the qualities Chris sees in me. In my 40s, I’m praying I’ll return to her.

🥂 Cheers to her 🥂

1. To determine your core values, google a list of core values (I got mine from Exhale but there are other free resources), and circle all the words that resonate with you. Then narrow it down to 15 priorities, and then 5. Those are your core values. Mine are authenticity, beauty, growth, identity, and truth.

2. Bless me by sending me a print.

3. Bless yourself by buying a hymn print or tea towel.

4. I encourage wrestling with one’s faith. It’s important to correct bad theology and return to the pure and true Gospel, so I’m not saying deconstruction is bad. I am saying those who do it publicly on social media don’t build me up. So many end up following their hearts into more sin, it’s not helpful for me to watch it happen or participate in it by following along, because it doesn’t have anything to do with me. I know this is a controversial opinion, but people are profiting financially from this process, which really bothers me. I just avoid it at all costs, except in person, when I, in truth and love, can walk alongside someone wrestling with their faith.