To Read: Articles
This 8-Year-Old Chess Champion Will Make You Smile // Nicholas Kristof // “Overcoming life’s basic truth: Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.”
Why I Ghost Social Media // Ifeoluwa Akinremi-Wade // “I wasn’t experiencing MY life in its raw form. I was keeping up with everybody’s social media personas, or trying to keep up with mine.”
You Leave Me With No Choice // Aarik Danielsen // “But pain also knows which buttons to push, how to dig its nails into your skin and bring about something acute. My pain feels sharpest in three situations which repeat themselves without fail.”
Sarah: A Promise To A Barren Woman // Sarah Cozart // “Sarah’s frustration bubbled over in an incredulous internal laugh. A promised son, huh? I’ve heard that before, but it’s too late now. Why didn’t you make it happen when my body was still working?”
Some Things Will Never Be Okay // Kristen Ladd // This poem is a fitting way to accompany the two pieces listed above on infertility. Trying to conceive, miscarriage, infertility, and parenthood hopes are so tender and delicate. I’m grateful for poets.
Disappointment // Bethany Spraggins Lutz // “As much as I offer lip service to providence, when the lights go out and the night gets long I am an anxious mess.”
Fear Of Missing Out On God’s Word? // Lore Ferguson Wilbert // “I begin to see [very small, intricate concepts] threaded through all of God’s word, and it is gradually changing aspects of my heart and mind that have been stuck for decades—aspects I tried to change by applying massive truths about God to them.”
To Read: Books
An American Marriage // Tayari Jones // Audiobook
A Praying Life // Paul E. Miller // Audiobook
To Watch
Kaia Kater — NPR Tiny Desk Concert
Kev On Stage — I Tried To Prank My Kids
To Listen: Music
Kamasi Washington — The Epic // This album is a whole TWO HOURS AND FIFTEY THREE MINUTES and I listened to it ALL one morning (starting out as Baumeister Breakfast Tunes). Is there a medal for this? I was jazzed out in the best way.
JID — DiCaprio 2 // Still great.
Kaia Kater — Grenades // Discovered this lovely album after watching her NPR Tiny Desk Concert.
Andrew Bird — My Finest Work Yet // He’s back with string and vocal magic.
To Make
Breakfast Casserole // With fried potatoes, sausage, egg, peppers and onions.
Colorful Veggie Leftovers // Leftover fried sweet potatoes, red cabbage, and avocado salsa. (Weird, perhaps, but a sunny flavor explosion in the best way.)
Wild Rice Soup // With carrot, onion, garlic, seasoning salt, and curry powder.
Cranberry Coconut Scone-Cookies // I ate all the nuts out of a large bag of trail mix. Used all the fruit bits as the sweet part in an otherwise biscuit-like scone mixture.
To Cultivate
Passing The Joy Of Gardening On To The Young Ones // My former roommate and friend, Sarah, has been hanging out and doing low-key activities, cooking meals, and spending time with an elementary girl for the past year or so. I’ve joined them on a few occasions (for Easter egg coloring, Pumpkin painting, Christmas ornament decorating, etc.) This time we planted seeds — chives and African daisies.
New Risks // For the first time, I submitted a piece of writing to an online publication for consideration.
Slow Puzzle Time // My parents gifted Jakob and I a puzzle of Texas. It is 1,000 pieces. The last one we did was one comprised of the national parks and it was 500. We have a modest start to build upon. We enjoy putting on a couple podcasts and/or music, and gettin to work.
Outdoor Time // We purchased a bike last fall for me, before the winter. Jakob and I only got a couple rides in before the cold arrived, so it was nice to head out this weekend for the first bike of the season. Spring weather feels like hope and refreshment. Evening walks around the neighborhood are also therapeutic.
Ordinary Observing // It’s been fun pausing at scenes like this and remembering that items have stories. Hoping to never tire of reliving the stories that have made, and are making, our home.
A Child-Like, Praying Life
“The opposite of a childlike spirit is a cynical spirit.
Cynicism creates a numbness toward life. Cynicism begins with a wry assurance that everyone has an angle. Behind every silver lining is a cloud. The cynic is always observing, critiquing, but never engaging, loving, and hoping.
To be cynical is to be distant. While offering a false intimacy of being “in the know,” cynicism actually destroys intimacy. It leads to bitterness that can deaden and even destroy the spirit.
Cynicism and defeated weariness have this in common: they both question the active goodness of God on our behalf. Left unchallenged, their low-level doubt opens the door for bigger doubt.
A praying life is just the opposite. It engages evil. It doesn’t take no for an answer. The psalmist was in God’s face, hoping, dreaming, asking. Prayer is feisty.
Cynicism, on the other hand, merely critiques. It is passive, cocooning itself from the passions of the great cosmic battle we are engaged. It is without hope.”
Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life
Luminous and Liminal 
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