It’s time for a reset. 2021 has been–well, a whirlwind. The long, choking oppression of the pandemic is lifting, and we’re busier than ever: soccer, baseball, color guard, 4H, scouts, marching band, concerts (hallelujah!), even church choir. Committee meetings. Oh, and there was that minor detail of a book release this spring. Pitching, promotion, recording…
Read MoreAll articles filed in calm
Time for a Reset
Respite
There is no such thing as a truly quiet day (holiday or otherwise) in a house with four children, three of them boys. And yet something unexpected happened on Christmas day this year. I made a sort of off-the-cuff, vague decision that wasn’t so much a decision as a shrug and a “whatever.” I never…
Read MoreHow Do You Power Down Your Brain?
I’ve said before that I’m obsessed with sleep. This is because i don’t get enough of it, though not for lack of trying. I go to bed at 9:30, I take naps during the day when it gets bad…but I don’t sleep well. In these latter days, I can blame it on kids (last night’s…
Read MoreIn This Season of Life
There are times when I realize I will never understand my children. Like Julianna, who can drag a pile of “Your Baby Can Read” cards the thickness of a Tolstoy volume around the house…but when I tell her to put them away, she must do it one at a time. (Whimper, pick up a card,…
Read MoreSacred Spaces
I have my places–places I go to be quiet and still. Although they are public spaces, one and all, I consider them mine, and I make a concerted effort to preserve them that way by visiting them when everyone else is busy with other things. A bluff overlooking a valley of sycamore and cedar, maple…
Read MoreThe Value of Singletasking
I’m a multitasker. Shocking, I know. But it’s true. I’m a make-lunch-while-feeding-baby, scribble-notes-in-grocery-store-checkout-line, do-spiritual-reading-while-nursing, scrapbook-while-watching-TV kind of girl. A girl after Martha’s own heart. Not that I don’t appreciate Mary. I want to be Mary. I crave silence and stillness, yet I always begrudge the time. And the logistics of making it happen keep getting…
Read MoreParched
God’s been calling me lately. As the blasted earth bakes and leaves wither on their branches; as they drop ungracefully to the ground, bleached and crunchy three months before the proper time; as big, billowy clouds form and dissipate listlessly amid gray-brown-blue skies impenetrable with humidity; as priceless, fleeting storms direct their energy southward (mostly)…
Read MoreWhen What You Need, You Can’t Have
This weekend, I read the most beautiful description of a place, a description that picked up my heart and plopped it down in the Sierra Nevada, and my whole body ached to hop a plane and follow it there. There hasn’t been much time for solitude and communing with God through creation in the last…I…
Read MoreA Snuggle On a Gray, Gloomy Day
The nights are harder this time around. Maybe it’s being older, with more kids; maybe it’s the cold weather, which renders the space beneath the blankets so cozy and the space outside it so unfriendly. Or maybe I’m just getting lazier. In any case, I actually sleep through the first minute or two of “I’m…
Read MoreSeeking Stillness
We sat in the front pew at church yesterday, our first Sunday to attend Mass as a family of six. It had been a long night; Michael decided to nurse every two hours, which meant for every just-over-an-hour I slept, I was up for half an hour. I was kind of a zombie. And in…
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Kathleen M. Basi 