This resonates with me more than I can say. I also find myself wondering why your church wanted you to shrink? I’ve felt pruned right down to the stump out of public ministry, but I love your reminder that all that waits hidden in the soil — including me— is alive and essential and needed
I am constantly in awe of how you craft stories to show us that the divine is in every aspect of life and nature, no matter how small. The upside down way… yes ❤️
Laura, I am so grateful for how resonant your work often is, both in the micro and macro. I’ve been converting our tiny, sloping backyard into prairie for 2+ years and my learnings this past month have been focused on the soil - how full of fungi and bacteria it should be, and likely isn’t due to decades of monoculture and compaction and runoff. And how cultivating certain plants will slowly do the work of rebalancing the ecosystem. I suppose it isn’t a coincidence; perhaps soil appreciation is (rightly) a gardening trend. Maybe Franco and I listened to the same podcast.
Generally, I’m in the 2011 season you describe - 3 kids 5 and under. I wobble between awe and exhaustion and frustration at feeling like other parts of my life are “on hold.”
I am reminded how when I served abroad, my favorite moments were the manual labor tasks when no part of me worried that there was something more important I should be doing. I’m realizing that’s my main tension right now… wanting to be present to even a few small tasks (making dinner, my own sleep, writing) but constantly being needed (wanted, demanded) in 3 other places. That is the soil of this season.
This could have just been a journal entry for myself, I suppose, but again, thank you.
This resonates with me more than I can say. I also find myself wondering why your church wanted you to shrink? I’ve felt pruned right down to the stump out of public ministry, but I love your reminder that all that waits hidden in the soil — including me— is alive and essential and needed
I am constantly in awe of how you craft stories to show us that the divine is in every aspect of life and nature, no matter how small. The upside down way… yes ❤️
Laura, I am so grateful for how resonant your work often is, both in the micro and macro. I’ve been converting our tiny, sloping backyard into prairie for 2+ years and my learnings this past month have been focused on the soil - how full of fungi and bacteria it should be, and likely isn’t due to decades of monoculture and compaction and runoff. And how cultivating certain plants will slowly do the work of rebalancing the ecosystem. I suppose it isn’t a coincidence; perhaps soil appreciation is (rightly) a gardening trend. Maybe Franco and I listened to the same podcast.
Generally, I’m in the 2011 season you describe - 3 kids 5 and under. I wobble between awe and exhaustion and frustration at feeling like other parts of my life are “on hold.”
I am reminded how when I served abroad, my favorite moments were the manual labor tasks when no part of me worried that there was something more important I should be doing. I’m realizing that’s my main tension right now… wanting to be present to even a few small tasks (making dinner, my own sleep, writing) but constantly being needed (wanted, demanded) in 3 other places. That is the soil of this season.
This could have just been a journal entry for myself, I suppose, but again, thank you.