Rich and Varied

I always thought that someday, when I’ve finally grown up or learned to be focused and organized that each day would lend to a single purpose of getting my real life lived. That most of what happens to my days right now are interruptions to the real deal. That life will be simpler eventually, somehow. It’s not. Now I know that I would be bored and even more disorganized than I am now if somehow that fantasy became reality. It isn’t possible and I don’t even want it anymore.

I am enjoying the pattern that’s already in place. It’s not random after all. Just because I spent all of Monday at the Minneapolis Mart choosing stock for our store instead of baking muffins and hanging the laundry all over the living room to dry doesn’t mean that it isn’t part of my real life. I live a rich and varied life. Retail chores on Monday and home making diversions like redoing the mantel to reflect a spring story on Tuesday is my real life. My real life is right now, no matter where I am.

So accomplishments this week included reading Miss Rumphius to Havilah, twice, and preparing our taxes in Clark’s office by his woodstove and a fish fry on Friday evening at Dru’s from three different catches of last summer’s fishings with the available Graber family. Like Miss Rumphius I would like to make my world more beautiful.

On our way over to the Mart on Monday I saw swans in the St Croix waterway elegantly swimming about on a small patch of open water. There was snow and ice everywhere else. Swans belong with warm sunshine on blue sparkling water. These swans didn’t get the memo apparently, but I think I was more confused than they seemed to be. Who needs summer to swim proudly around on water. This is their real life now, I guess. Swans don’t do much other than feed off the mucky bottom of the pond and swim around making lovely tableau with their pretty, curvy necks and flower shaped bodies. Now and then at night they’ll trumpet for a few minutes in duet, but other than that their real life is just being pretty. They have no grand plans to change the world or plant five bushels of lupine seed along the lanes, behind the church, or over by the cemetery. (You should see Havilah’s eyes though, when we get to that part of Miss Rumphius’s story. I know just what she’s feeling by those sparkles of pleasure.)

Settling in to my real life now no matter what day it is or where I’m stationed for the day helps me to stayed tuned and focused. Now here’s another question. This one brought on by a passionate outburst on the part of one of my girls about losing weight along with reading in Magnolia Journal about authenticity. Who is the real me? This is not nearly as confusing as it sounds. I think we girls struggle with that question at different times in our lives. I’m admitting it, anyway. Doesn’t the real me weigh a few pounds less than I do? In the eyes of the Lord, who am I? The stumbling, mistake prone, idealistic one? Or the sinner saved by grace I am becoming? Which one do the neighbors deal with? If I have trouble wearing THIS skin today will I even notice the difference of little steps of change and self improvement I might encounter tomorrow? Dottie Rambo sang about it. This house of flesh is but a prison. Bars of bone hold my soul. But the doors of clay are gonna burst wide open. When the angel sets my spirit free… I suppose the same rules apply. Living today as my real life with my real self, not some trumped up, hopeless ideal. Jesus loves me just as I am, today. It’s what He gave me to work with. Not that I don’t try to do and be better thinner or whatever improvement I desire; but if that consumes me, I’m wasting His gifts to me. God knows what’s in this day anyway, so why not live it!

Lisl was a lot more successful at completing her new spring mantel decor than was I. I was feeling so frugal and clever to use real greenery on mine. It WAS pretty nice, but two days into it I figured out that my precious greenery was suffering heat stroke and some of it had already succombed. I’ll have to fill in with faux greenery after all. In summary, faux greenery is better than real houseplants on the mantel above the wood stove. And life is good, as is.