June in Review

Road trips, Womanhood, Letting go of the Digital Life, Mountains, and Home

E. Phillips Fox, 1908

June, on the whole, has been rejuvenating. The postpartum fog is finally lifting, though little by little. This postpartum has been harder in different ways than the last. The first was much harder physically, the second more so emotionally. I hesitate to provide deeper details because vulnerability on the internet is sometimes too easy. Womanhood is so deeply personal and yet so deeply communal. Postpartum is an emotional time for many of us and I’m sure many of you will understand. Anyways, I said June has been rejuvenating, not sad haha.

I wrote the last “in review” post from my parent’s place in Texas. That trip continued on until the middle of June and by the time we got back we had covered ground in Texas, Oklaholma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Whew. People at home, here in the South where a road trip is anything over 3 hours, always ask how. How did you manage that with two kids under two? And the short answer is I don’t know. Snacks? Silly games? A willingness to lose some dignity for a baby smile?

In all seriousness it was a great trip. We celebrated our third anniversary by having our first solo date night since Baby P (thank you Mom and Dad haha) and last minute ditched a fancy resterant to run across the street in the rain to grab tacos and Mexican cokes instead. Truly a magical moment. The date ended where all good dates do… in the bookstore hahaha.

After some time in Texas my whole family caravaned north to Colorado where we went to a family wedding and spent time with cousins. While we didn’t get to spend a crazy amount of time in the mountains, we did drive through many and went to Estes Park for a day. Mountains were the first formative and most lasting impression of beauty on my heart (you can read about that here). Even if I didn’t get to spend much time hiking/reveling etc, it was just good to see that they were still there, just as glorious as ever.

This passage from Elizabeth Goudge’s Green Dolphin Street captures my feelings about the mountains and the idea of “true home” well:

“Someone once said to me, that our home, our special county, is where we find liberation. I suppose she meant that it is where our souls find it easiest to escape from self, and it seems to me it just that way with us when what is about us echos the best that we are.”¹

And in light of that quote, it would be almost blasphemous not to include Lewis’s: “I have come home at last! This is my most real country! I belong here. This is the land I’ve been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now.”²

Even after all the family time, the extra hands with the babies, and that refreshing time in Colorado, I did not come home immediately happier, but rather, a little out of sorts, and, in all honesty, a little discontent. I didn’t want to lean into that feeling and was rather upset with myself for allowing such a good time to become a source of grumbling about the real life.

One of the best things such a long trip with littles did for me was give me more confidence in getting out on my own. Previously going to the park AND running errands seemed daunting. But having spent so much time going place to place to place on our trip I felt more confident taking the kids on longer more energetic outings.

So, what this means is that we’ve been to the park a lot in the last few weeks. My toddler is gaining confidence (and sharing skills haha) and we are both benefiting from the sunshine. Sometimes we stop at our favorite coffee shop afterwards, or go do a grocery pick up. Sometimes we go to the splash pad at the riverfront with friends. Sometimes we go with my husband to the park by the lake a little up the highway.

All this time outside, while is hasn’t fixed everything, is pulling me out of a slump. It’s sweaty and humid and sometimes I wonder if I’m breathing water rather than air but it’s so good. It’s made me appreciate our greater community better. As has my husband’s new job at the church. We are in a good place.

I could keep going, but if I do I think this will become more rambley than I intended. The daily anxieties of motherhood are still hard but Jesus is teaching me so much about reaching the end of myself. Daily, hourly, another besetting sin is brought to light in my heart, my patience is tried, someone needs extra love once again, and more is asked of me. A while ago a Goodwill employee asked me if it’s hard to be a parent and I think I said something along the lines of “it’s a good kind of hard.” And he said something that I haven’t forgotten, something about how it must feel so good to feel so needed. Gosh, now I’m tearing up.

It is good to be so needed. It’s the lack of immenint need that makes the old ladies at the grocery store stop and say “enjoy every minute!” I’m trying. And with the help of the Lord and the sunshine I will.

Books

Hannah Coulter - “To know that I was known by a new living being, who had not existed until she was made in my body by my desire and brought forth into the world by my pain and strength - that changed me. My heart, which seemed to have had only loss and grief in it before, now had joy in it also.”³ *cries*

“We were looking at each other, though we could barely see. It was almost dark. But to know you love somebody, and to feel his desire falling over you like a warm rain, touching you everywhere, is to have a kind of light. When a woman and a man give themselves to each other, they have a light between them that nobody but them can see.” ⁴

I rarely underline in fiction but I found my fingers twitching for a pencil so many times in this book. A while ago I saw someone dismiss this book as too slow but I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s about a real life.

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Little Men - Full of sweet, though somewhat idealistic, vignettes. I think the idealism was intended. Little Woman is the superior of the two, simply because I think it draws more from Alcott’s real life and thus has that light of truth shining from it. That said, I did enjoy this read and the large cast of characters was fun. Many of Jo’s words about her girlish temper echoed Marmee’s own recollections of herself that she drew upon when giving advice to her moody girl. It was sweet to see the fruit of Jo’s hard work in curbing her unruliness.

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The Great Gatsby - I’m not sure how I ended up with this copy but if there’s a Connor Winkler out there I ended up with your high school annotation assignment. I, however, missed out on Gatsby in high school and am somewhat glad I read it for the first time as an adult and not a teen. Much of it would have been lost on me at a younger age. The writing is tight and each word weighted. Deeply insightful without becoming moralistic. Thoroughly enjoyed reading alongside Close Reads. I expected to be sad at the end of this novel (I’m about to give a big plot point away so please skim ahead if you don’t want to know!) but man! Nobody came to his funeral! That was the final gut punch for me. To be so appreciated yet so unloved… what a difficult truth about the superficiality of a life without any transcendence.

Media

Belfast (Film) - I adore this movie. As a semi autobiographical story about the writer/director’s childhood during “the Troubles” in Belfast, the subject matter has the potential to be melancholy. In lesser hands this movie would be depressing. But instead, thanks to Kennth Branagh, it is truly one of the most joyful films I have ever watched. In large part this is due to the soundtrack and the luminosity of the little boy playing young Branagh. Highly, highly recommend this one! That juxtaposition between sorrow and joy, while not a Christian film, captures the Christian life well. Though we are perishing here, we are daily renewed by the Lord.

Also the song “Everlasting Love,” is great and we’ve been listening to it on repeat in the car. Which makes difficult toddler troubles in the car feel much more lighthearted.

Here’s a great interview with Branagh about the film.

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Autumn Kern’s dumb phone series has been a revelation in intentionality and person-hood for me. While I’m not planning on chucking my smart phone for a variety of reasons, her principles have had me thinking about how I can reorient my life away from machines and more toward people. (Talking to a person for advice/practical help before Googleing, taking more pictures on my actual camera, wait to buy online until the end of the day, etc.) There’s a lot of subconcious ways we have structured our lives around our phones and it’s difficult to examine those.

Autumn touches on the idea of applying principles without having to exactly copy the person you learned the principle from, an idea that woman particularly need to remember: “I think we forget that on the internet it does not have to look the same way to be the pursuit of the right thing.” ⁵

This series, along with other think pieces, and probably beginning with my deep dive into fertility/sexuality has really set me along a path thinking about human flourishing. Thinking not only in terms of “is this sinful” but “is this best for human flourishing” has been new for me. In other words, thinking along the lines of, “To what end was I made?” Of course, right and wrong are mixed up in that too. But what does right mean? I could go on… I feel like I’ve been drinking from a firehouse lately when it comes to this idea and it’s honestly overwhelming because modernity gets so much about what it means to be imago dei wrong.

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Close Reads’ The Great Gatsby series was great and so helpful. If you’re planning on reading the book, or have read it before, go check it out!

Kitchen

This has now been the third month where we’ve been operating under a no-meal-planning meal plan situation. I realized that I need a little more structure than rashly deciding on meatloaf halfway through the day because I didn’t have the time or bandwidth to do anything that took more than a few minutes of prep. Rather than switching back to a traditional meal plan, because this system is working really well for our budget (thanks Costco!), I took some time to write down all of our favorite meals. This included dinners, breakfasts, desserts, snacks, and coffees. Now, I just pull from this list!

The key here is that I broke dinner down into three categories, the first being “easy Peasy Dinners”, these pull from what is in our typical monthly grocery haul. These are the cheapest and most memorized meals for simple days. The second category is “Simple Dinners With More Ingredients or Effort,” these either require slightly more planning ahead in terms of time or require an extra ingredient or two that I don’t typically have on hand. Then the last category is “Special Occasion or Guests”, this one is fairly self explanatory. At some point I’d like to create a pretty little menu and post it here because it has been so helpful for me to glean from other’s work in the kitchen.

Coffee

I saw this idea a while back about naming your home coffee corner to add some whimsy to your life. I’m calling our’s the Shadowy Nook Cafe, because that part of the kitchen is always in the shade. Honestly I love making coffee at home, the experimentation I get to do and the specification I can achieve without driving anyone crazy is great. My mother-in-law bought our espresso machine for us as a wedding gift and I look at it about once a week and think “what a wonderful gift”.

Anyways, some fun things in the coffee department this month!

In true keeping with the whole trying-to-learn-from-people-first-rather-than-the-internet, I asked a friend for some advice on how to save money on coffee beans and she graciously let me come over to watch her roast her own beans. I have yet to try this on my own, but the oven method she employed seems incredibly simple, we’ll ideally be making this switch sometime in July when our current supply starts to wane.

In the drink department I’ve been making orange vanilla lattes. With whole milk! I forgot to mention that Baby P is tolerating dairy way better (which makes me question my previous judgement but we’ll not go there now) which has been a win for my coffee life. I tried an orange vanilla latte in San Antonio and thought surely I could try this at home.

On the stove I boiled together 1 cup brown sugar, 3/4ths cup orange juice, 1/2 cup water, vanilla extract, and grated orange peel. This simmers for a few minutes until your house smells very summery and then allow to cool before pouring into a mason jar. (Or alternatively you can pour boiling hot liquid into a jar like the silly woman I was and create a hairline crack lies dormant until your jar literally comes in two when you go to pick it up spilling sweet orange juice liquid all over your fridge. 🙃)

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Photos

That’s a wrap for June folks! Until July, or earlier if I find the time to do something out of the box!

1. Hodder Publishing, pg. 147

2. The Last Battle pg. 196

3. pg. 54

4. pg. 71

5. 3:46