anyone need a book recommendation?

way to go, winn! i love it, and i love you.

worth more than a thousand words

(going local)

lonely hearts club

i think i have stumbled into phase 3 of this transition: loneliness.

there are several women here that i truly enjoy being around and am eagerly getting to know on a deeper level. oh, but the important work of friendship takes so long! and frankly, i miss the ease of relationships that began years ago, where together we have experienced heartache, joy, struggle, pain, laughter, and of course tears--all those shared experiences that only make good friendships richer and better. i miss the comfort of seasoned friendships where there is very little temptation to do the "please, please like me" dance because we already know we are loved, crazy baggage and all, and there is simply no need. i miss walking into dcf and feeling like i've come home, where there are people who are just as raw and broken and passionate and hungry for jesus as i am.

we've been able to spend time with some of our dear friends recently, friends whom we consider family. it's been refreshing and reorienting to be around them, and my heart has relaxed into this familiar geography of knowing and being known. 

being known--this is all any of us ever really wants, isn't it?

5

seth turned five years old this past tuesday, and here he is, looking like such a big guy. he's practically ready for college. seth continues to be in love with life, with good music, good food, and the ladies. he is generous, affectionate, funny, curious, compassionate, brave. i think he's pretty wonderful.

happy birthday, sweet seth. you bring immeasurable joy and light into our lives and into this world.

my love

whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. ~ emily bronte

winn and i celebrated our anniversary a couple of weeks ago. 11 years of marital bliss. well, bliss may be too strong of a word to cover all 11 years, but despite the turmoil that is inherent in a marriage (what is it that chesterton says--"the whole pleasure of marriage is that it is a perpetual crisis"?), we have been wonderfully happy together on the whole. and even in those difficult times, i could not imagine struggling along with anyone but the man i did marry, a man whose heart is deep and wide and brave and who puts up quite cheerfully with an awful lot from little ol' me.

i was reading along in dorothy sayers' book busman's honeymoon recently and happened upon these beautifully exquisite words that perfectly capture what i feel toward winn:

"all my life i have been wandering in the dark--but now i have found your heart--and am satisfied. . . and what do all the great words come to in the end, but that?--i love you--i am at rest with you--i have come home."

yes. that's it. i am at home and at rest and in love with winn.

and now, thankfully, we are finally where we belong--with each other, of course--but also in virginia. surely we were destined to live in a state whose motto is this: