Nurturing a Worn Life
On elevating what we see, hear, and believe
I am sitting at my desk, a repurposed old wooden kitchen island that at times pulls my sweater with its rough edges. It is worn, but I am worn, too. Amidst the scattered papers (to read, to fill out, to file, to burn) are dried poppy seed heads and lavender, pretty rocks, miniature homemade books wrapped with twine, a tiny driftwood doll with a knitted dress and felted hat, and photographs of my two beloved grandmothers. Above me on the cedar wall are photos of my babies and butcher block shelves lined with books on botany and herbal medicine. A copper patina candle flickers its scent of orange spice, wafting and blending with the logs burning in the wood stoves nearby.
This is where I come to bleed words onto a page, to embrace the pilgrimage into this liminal space between exhaustion and contentment, hoping that my offering will somehow reveal land ahead. As a full time mother and homemaker, however, hardly a dozen words come to the page before a snack is needed, a question comes to mind, a problem needs solving, a curiosity needs watering. So I come, I go, I come, I go, floating here and there on some wayward boat like jetsam, slowly dripping out words until I am filleted from the effort and doubtful of the significance.
Death by a thousand nicks.
Yesterday, I ordered two pieces of furniture: a coffee table in which to store our many board games, and a side hutch for the dining room, presumably to store the serving dishes currently teetering on top of the fridge. Neither pieces are particularly expensive (or even real wood), but the purchase seems a reasonable exploration into what decorating a home we actually plan to stay in would look like. The last ten years in rentals uprooted us four times even as we welcomed two new babies, and the couple dozen months I spent each time between packing and unpacking Home Depot moving boxes while navigating pregnancy, postpartum, nursing, and eventually perimenopause found me throwing heaps of homemaking cargo—things that make for “cozy” like furniture and books and crafts and kitchenware and textiles—overboard. How could these things “spark joy” when I am constantly putting them into boxes, hefting them onto trucks, and in real time feeling the very heavy weight of them all?
I hesitated when I ordered. The doubt squeezes at times. What if we have to move again?
A friend invites me to Housemoot. I have zero idea what this is. What I hear is “three hours worth of a few friends, knitting, tea, lunch, lectures, cake, and music.”
I. Am. In.
I decide I need to wear a dress, layered up with every bit of coziness. Wool socks, crocheted scarf, the old woolen coat, my low lace up boots. I even put on eyeliner and some mascara. Somewhere in my dream world, I am a visitor in the late 1800’s, but arriving by a powered engine rather than by my own two feet.
When I arrive, I am not disappointed. The tea is hot, the china cups delicate. I find a comfortable chair and sink in, welcomed into the circle of friends who are all also tenderly grieving the palpable absence of Sara, and soon enough we are clicking needles and listening to a lengthy lecture.
I didn’t expect to be so richly fed. Certainly, the turkey soup is nourishing, but I find the emotional and spiritual food a sweet salve as well, finding wounds I had dismissed as insignificant. I am elevated by the hospitality, the love in the room, and all of the refinement of a conference well done.
I find the lectures to be edifying, not only from writing that rolls delicious phrases around in my head, but from the deeper contemplations brought forth. The first speaker, Amy Baik Lee, talks about the sorrow of missing something or someone deeply, of leaving whole places and times behind, and how those memories become kindling for melancholy. Oh, how I relate to that homesickness, that heartache for people who are no longer in my life. My needles move along while I listen, finding comfort that another person acknowledges the value I hold for my own history, for my own memories and the stories I’ve made from them, for my threshing of the essences. I scribble down phrases, questions, fragments of thought, and afterward venture to discuss with my friends the many trails uncovered.
Later, we listen to and deliberate how to create intentional spaces and unobstructed time to grieve, and how to steward (not “get over”) the sorrows we carry. We consider the art of hospitality and feasting (and the differences therein), and while enjoying cake reflect how creative work of all kinds is a kind of love, the love that says, “It is good that you exist.” I think about this quite a bit.
We laugh, cry plenty, drink copious amounts of tea, knit many inches of wool, and imbibe deeply all of the nourishment of pleasant conversation and comfortable companionship.
My furniture is on the way, and now I look at the rug in my living room differently. It is old, a muted gray, and the wrong size. Suddenly I am measuring for sectional sofas and side chairs and area rugs, as if simply wishing it so would expand my wallet. I think, this is the house we have purchased, I don’t want to “make it work”; I want to “make it home”. I want to invest. I want proper lighting, a place to easily lounge, somewhere to sit with my book or my knitting when the fire is burning bright. I want to create.
I cautiously welcome this invitation to bring about a little structure and order and color and warmth, to embrace the place I am in today. My imagination is stirred, and I pray for the opportunity to overcome my apprehension and actually fund the venture to feather the nest, even if another UHaul truck is in the future.
After two days of Housemoot, I decide to clean out some distractions to create space for more uplifting endeavors. “I feel SO elevated. I should be listening to these kinds of lectures more,” I tell my friend, “and watching less YouTube videos.”
So I begin there, and discover I had subscribed to no less than 66 channels, mainly in order to find them again because at one point or another each one sounded, and probably was/is, interesting. I slash them down to 15, considering that was a manageable size for the time I spend during my morning workouts, watching.
I do the same for Substack. Somehow I had subscribed to 87 newsletters! I decide to cut them to the same number as my videos, 15. Most of them I let go because they cause me angst over which I have zero control, but others because I never once tried a recipe or spent time giving it the attention it deserved.
I dump most of my podcast subscriptions, 18 of them, leaving me with two to follow.
What’s left still sounds like a lot to me. But I’d rather snuggle under a blanket and read a paperback book, write my pen pals back, or watch a movie with the family and knit. I decide to elevate not only the quality of what I watch and listen to, but the importance I give of my time and the space in which I do these things.
In a lazy evening lull, I explore the Rabbit Room further, curious about this Christian community of creatives, and purchase a few talks to listen to. My interest and imagination in writing, art, and craft at times has felt burdensome, like something(s) I’ve had to downplay and not truly enjoy, even as I thrill in the exploration of words, paint, textile, and more. In my head, I hear the critic’s sneer of “hobby” and wasting time and in general stupidity of thinking I could ever submit anything anyone would find hopeful, helpful or beautiful. But, also in my head, through my earbuds, I listen as a speaker exhorts, “Don’t love the things that hate you.”
The last couple of weeks, I have been reminded that, for the Christian, the act of creating is the act of laying down Ebenezer stones, of testifying to the Lord’s help and strength and power and grace and wisdom in a life submitted to God. I’ve remembered that I am still standing, that darkness/apathy/depression has not overcome me, and that the sorrows in my life have actually been seeds for prayer and purposeful activity. I realized that even if I am indeed floundering on a sea of uncertainty, I actually don’t need the oars because Jesus made the sea, owns the sea, and is in the boat with me. I’m also not an undisciplined piece of unwanted debris; my writing and my homemaking and indeed all aspects of my life have meaning in the offering(s). Serving Him faithfully—and you, too, dear reader— means that we will by His grace continue to think on Him and to indeed create in our own ways, not to find a place of faux security or of a sorrowless life, but to fight back against darkness and despair and fear and envy and every wicked way, to come to love our time in the boat, to appreciate our nicks from the worn desk, to find the sacred in all of our worn lives.