Life Lessons: The Months Coming, the Months Going

It’s quiet here, except for the munching of my Lay’s Potato Chips.

Eliot and Travis have gone to clean out the car– #2 on my list of nesting activities to be done before

August is over and baby is here.

I’ve been trying to sum up what life has been like over the past few months, as if all these lessons I’m learning can’t just stand on their own as they come, day-by-day.

No, I search for summation–and yet, my life still orders itself in lists- how I love lists!

I think the big heart lessons began pounding their way into me in April, when we went to DC for the Global Prayer Gathering and I spent the weekend curled up around the toilet with the stomach flu at 20 weeks of pregnancy–but this is another post (or 5) altogether.

Since then, life has broken itself down into these small moments of trying to understand the bigness (and often the painfulness) of life and what it brings.

So here’s the list so far, subject to change, subject to grow and become thousands of mini-lessons inside each one that is grand.

-Expectations and reading God

-Using gifts and how to get free records

-More shattered expectations– and the thousands of gifts still given

-Being poor, poor, and poor– and learning to be still and to simplify and to bake

-Community, no matter its size, is love poured out

-Seasons fo prayer and transformations of the heart

-Oh, crap, we’re having another baby- nesting on no sleep and how toddlers love to “help”

The months of April to August have unfolded, each one in all its complexity, and for my heart and head I need to unwrap and take on what exactly it means for my life. All the pain and ugliness, all the rejoicing and thankfulness included. Life is some sort of glorious mess to be untangled and understood, and if I’m lucky, I can untangle some of it as I eat chips and lounge on the couch, belly bulging and chaos quiet.