In The Sickness. In The Waiting. In The Stillness of the House.

We've been passing something around our family because we like to share, even if it's germs. And as much as I HATE seeing my family sick, and as much as I hate being sick myself (I'm not trying to sound like this has been fun and I'm just sitting here counting my blessings through it all, lol) we've had a lot of time to just sit and be. Sickness does that to you. It demands that you come face-to-face with your limits. To acknowledge that you really don't have as much control as you wish you had. It insists on making life stop (at least your own life) and on bringing to light the things that really matter. And often times the things that just don't. 

It's good to be reminded of these things. 

It brings a healthy sense of perspective.

I'm on day five of whatever this is. The first two days there wasn't much reflecting. Just sleeping. Lots of sleeping. And then I started coming back to life. Slowly. Ever so slowly. I still don't have any energy to do much of anything "productive" or do I?

As I sat in some solitude before the changing of the year I looked back over the past year as I always do. Reflecting on the things that worked, some things that didn't, and used my memories, like a viewfinder, highlighting the highs and lows of the year. One question I ask during this process is, "What fills me up?". And my answer came quicker than normal this year. I love to write. Most of the time it's just in my journal and actually, even that has been scarce over the past couple of years. I want to get back to this blog. To writing my days, my thoughts, my questions, our moments. 

So over the past couple of days, as I've sat here in the sickness, in the waiting, in the stillness of the house (that is finally starting to come back to life) I have caught back up on the memories of our lives. Mostly just in pictures simply to get me caught up, so words can start flowing again. If not for anyone else, for me. And I'm ok with that.

I know, I have Instagram, but there is something about feeling as though I'm a competing voice in the masses over there. Here I can just be me. You can come and go as you please, or not even come at all, but I can be here and show up in my little corner of the internet with no strings attached.

When I first began the blog, oh back in 2007!!!!, I had 2 littles, we traveled full-time as musicians, I posted about cloth diapering, couponing, product reviews and life as a young mom in the trenches. I can't even believe how much time I spent on here. Our lives look so very different now. We have a house full of teenagers that stay up 3 hours after Josh and I have gone to bed, eat all the food from my grocery run as I'm literally unloading it out of the bags and we have been faithful in our ministry for the past 14 years. The Lord has taught us so much. We have been through a heck-of-a-lot in our ministry, marriage, parenting, faith, relationships, health...but one thing remains. God and his faithfulness through it all. 

So welcome to the unpolished, no-agenda meanderings of my current life.