Musings on Life and Beauty Archives

Enthusiasm, Gratitude, Stewardship

January 9, 2025 jennifer DIY, Musings on Life and Beauty, sewing

The sky is gloriously blue today, almost zero clouds in sight. This feels uncommon in January, so I am reveling in it. I spent part of the day running all my post-Christmas errands in the sunshine, smiling at the geese flying overhead, and treasuring the sun warming my arms and face as I drove. My heart is full, and three words parade through my mind on repeat: enthusiasm, gratitude, stewardship.

Stewardship is my official word for 2025. I selected it many months ago. But for some reason I’ve had to dig deeper for enthusiasm in the new year. Dreary winter is the likely culprit. I’m reminding myself that what really matters is action – just DO SOMETHING every day to make my dreams come true. Even if I’m slogging at first, eventually the enthusiasm will increase once more and with it, momentum.

So today, in the sunshine and the lovely light in my house, I glanced in the mirror and my heart pinched with gratitude. So many favorite things in one little corner, all of them meaningful to me. Suddenly, there it was: enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, gratitude, stewardship. I want to protect all three of these, to be a better steward in every possible area. While doing it, to serve and create with joyful enthusiasm – passion, even. To open my eyes ever wider to the beauty and blessings of life, letting gratitude fill every crack in my heart. Perhaps I should choose three words this year!

Leaning into Gratitude

November 5, 2024 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty, Thanksgiving, Uncategorized

It feels like anxiety and stress levels are running a little high for many of us, and for a myriad of reasons. Autumn blew in and suddenly today feels like winter, complete with tiny snowflakes swirling in the biting wind. Darkness settles over the day early, making me want to curl up with a book. Yet there is much to do; my calendar is full, so many people around me are struggling, and all of us watch the news in concern. What to do? I’m leaning into gratitude as a powerful tool for staying positive in tricky times.

I found a lovely printable gratitude tree recently which I intended to use at Thanksgiving. Today I changed my mind and printed a couple dozen copies. I think it’s time to use them now, so I’ll be sharing them with family and friends this week. The tree has 16 banners for writing down the blessings we’re grateful for. It also says “Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.” I agree. For many years I have loved the quote from G.K. Chesterton, “I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”

So today, instead of worrying, here are just a few things filling me with wonder.

The last of my summer dahlias, cut and on the kitchen table.

One lone bells of Ireland plant in my flowerbed. I’ve tried to grow these for years with no success. Imagine my surprise and delight when a single seed grew this time! I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.

The sound of geese honking overhead, causing me to look up as they fly in formation across the pink-tinged sky at sunset. Against the backdrop of nearby mountains, it’s magical.

Watching one of my children light up with a new-to-them insight, and savoring the smile that comes with it. Small miracles like these remind me it’s amazing that we can keep learning.

Hot pink streaks on the back of fading flower petals. It’s the little things!

Cooking dinner for my family with food we grew in the garden, while savoring the colors, smells, and textures of fresh vegetables.

Slow stitching in the evenings, making steady progress on my applique project.

Studying the shapes and forms around me, because they are an endless source of inspiration and beauty.

What does leaning into gratitude look like for you? Savoring simple joys is, undoubtedly, a healthy practice. So lean a little more. Look for the good. Live in the gain. Do it emphatically, no matter what’s wrong out in the world. We’re going to make it!

My Bleeding Hearts

May 18, 2024 jennifer Musings on Life and Beauty

I remember it well, the wondering if I would ever feel happy again. Ever smile a genuine smile. Wondering if the heartbreak that threatened to pull me apart would ever quiet to a distant ache.

It was May. So busy and so awful. I carried a pain that made me pace circles around my house unless there was something needing immediate attention. My only coherent thoughts came in prayer. I bought a number 7 to put on my kitchen counter, a reminder of the people who needed me to hold it together somehow.

On a walk to visit a neighbor, I noticed bleeding hearts in bloom. I’ve always loved them, but this was different. It felt like the only thing in the world that might understand me. This achingly beautiful, heart shaped flower with a teardrop falling from it. It was everything I couldn’t say aloud. So I drove to the local nursery, found one, bought it… and nurtured it carefully all summer in it’s pot.

At the end of the season, too overwhelmed to find a proper spot for it but too attached to get rid of it, I dug a hole in the first spot I thought of in my yard. A spot where I’d tried other perennials over the years. A spot where NOTHING had ever grown back before. That’s why it was bare. Not a good spot of dirt, apparently. But I planted it anyway because it was all I could manage that day and I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

Imagine my surprise the following spring when it came back.

And every year since.

It stops me in my tracks every time: it’s so much more than bleeding hearts. It’s my heartbreak, growing in the worst soil, and thriving.

Today, years later, I sit near them just to be there, to look and admire, and remember. I remember those days, days made harder by knowing we were only at the beginning of a road I desperately wanted to avoid. And it has been long and hard, sometimes excruciatingly so. I don’t know where the road ends, or if it ever will during my life. I know so much more, and so much less, than I did then. What a journey!

Today, here is what I know: God knows us and is aware of us. He gives us bad soil sometimes, and it’s up to us to plant what we’ve got and press forward. To show up and keep moving and do our best to love. Even if we’re doing it with broken, bleeding hearts. And somehow, He will find a way to let us know He’s still there. Somehow the sharp pain settles to a dull ache, and the day eventually comes that we smile and laugh for real.

And the bleeding hearts come back again: stronger, more beautiful. A witness.

I’ll never take it for granted. Truly, all things testify of Him.