The 365th Post

What I have learned from blogging once a day for a year:

1.  That our memories are held in language, and we honor God by remembering the story we are living because it is a gift.

2.  That writing does not always come easily, but that the act of sitting down around the same time everyday with an open page set like a trap in front of you is the same act whether you catch something or not.  We are not after what is in the trap.  We are after what that gesture means--that we commit to listening even when we think we can't possibly hear the music of our days.

3.  That having friends who return again and again to check in on you through what you've shared about your life can sustain you through many, many hard times.  That I am not alone and have been given such good friends both near and far.  I love you, friends.

4.  That by capturing an entire year of our lives, I will be able to give Nora some gift in the future, one wrapped in a package that says, "This is when you were four.  You won't believe everything we did that year."

5.  That I love pickling things, that capturing moments in language is a kind of bottling of our lives so we might savor them later.  When I was four, I remember trying to contain my breath inside a bottle, blowing it in and quickly plugging the hole.  I would stare into the invisible space inside the jar and wonder that it also contained some part of me I couldn't see.  Faith is not so hard to practice when you think of breath and wind and music and all the other invisible things that are truly there despite how you can't see them.  I can say with all certainty, God is present and fills me with the breath of His love like that bottle I held.

6.  That I like farm life and being a mom and just about everything about my life, this gift of His grace.

7.  [                                                                                                             ]