Invitations

On taquitos, leaf piles, and pregnancy sickness

Photo by Olga Vilkha 🇺🇦 on Unsplash

If you were handed that beautiful, sought after, envelope with an inscribed wax seal, what would you want the invitation to say?

I would choose an invitation to more presence in our home, more breathing room to enjoy each season. More quiet evenings at home playing games and drinking tea. More snuggles and library book reading. More porch sitting and letter practice. More cooking together with a chair and a kid on either side of me, whipping up recipes. October tends to be a natural sabbatical from writing for me as I marinate in the sensory experiences a fall in Pennsylvania offers, but I look forward to stealing away more writing moments in the coming months.

The sunshine has been particularly glorious this week, although we have been loving this fall in general. We have kept our schedule intentionally slow and at home a lot of days. We’ve been working towards a tidy house and decluttering so I’m not constantly moving things around. We’ve had time to light our candle in the morning and proclaim, “Christ is light!”

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The Definition

Invitation

[a] request to be present or participate (Merriam-Webster)

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An Invitation to Play

Friends come over for a neighborhood walk and we search one of our favorite streets for leaf piles for the kids to jump in. The kids giggle and jump, and us mamas watchfully keep an eye out for cars and pause the play when they pass us. We linger in the moment for awhile, enjoying conversation and the smell of decaying leaves.

The sound of a leaf blower fills the air as a man works on his driveway. When we walk past, his wife comes out and invites us, “Bring the kids back in a day or two and we will have a huge leaf pile by our house they can jump in! It will probably be about 4 feet high!” We chat for a few more minutes before continuing our walk.

The next afternoon, the girls are ramy and we are waiting on my husband to get home. “Let’s take a walk and see if the giant leaf pile is done!” Eagerly, the girls prepare for the walk and we head a few blocks over to see. It is ready! And it is GIANT! Definitely the perfect jumping pile of our dreams. The girls dance and play in the leaves/ They play for awhile and we also see some deer close by which is always a treat for our city-living, country-heart souls. I make a wish that the elderly couple inside has peeked out and seen the joy on our faces.

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An Invitation to Change Perspective

A Prayer for Pregnancy Sickness

God,
In between heaves and hurls,
I offer this whispered thanks.

Amidst the stench of my humanity,
I am ever grateful that there is purpose with this discomfort,
That this irritation is not in vain,
That development becomes my focal point to walk through it.

I am extremely appreciative for a sense of humor
As I lose all sense of public and private decorum,
Hugging trash cans, toilets, and ziploc bags,
And definitely for not tripping the time I scrambled off my bicycle to puke along a trail.

I thank you for the way my one-year-old 
drags the kitchen trash can to my side
As she pats my arm and points,
For this is one way to practice compassion in action.

Above all, 
on the days I'm tempted to forget 
the unseen happenings within me,
Thank you for tangible reminders that you are working to bring about life

Both within my body and within my heart.

Amen.

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An Invitation to Be a Light-bringer

“Yo, got any candy? Remember us?? We used to live in the neighborhood!” A gaggle of teen boys crowds on my porch, their Halloween glow light necklaces adding a trace of visibility to the broken-porch-light darkness. “Hold on a second!” We haven’t had trick-or-treaters on our street the five years we’ve lived here, but thank God for my back-up stash in case they come, I think as I grab fistfuls of candy from the top shelf of our cupboard.

I open the door and hand them candy, recognizing them as the boys from “the black dog house” (nicknamed as such because the dog was always getting out and chasing kids and my girls were terrified) who had moved away a few months ago.

“Ooh, it smells good,” one of the boys says and I respond that we are getting ready to eat supper.

“Give me a second,” I run and scoop up handfuls of warm taquitos straight off the tray, handing them off to happy young men.

I think back to a few posts I had seen on Facebook earlier in the day about encouraging teens to trick-or-treat: “They could be doing something else!” and perhaps my favorite post, the one about people that also give the option of selecting a raw potato instead of candy if they want and how so many comments reiterated that kids love the potatoes.

I’ve been thinking of this line from Sally Clarkson’s newest book, "May we be collectors of light and bearers of light so that we shine forth today.”

I grin, loving that I got to have my own “potato” moment with the kids. Thankful that despite the broken porch light, we have a giant window and an open front door emanating light, that we are a light-bearing home in atmosphere and spirit.

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Other Invitations I’ve Been Accepting & Extending -

• Unplugging from my phone (Thank you, Hannah Brencher and The Unplugged Hours

• to be outside in the sunshine as much as possible

• two incredible women’s conference where I soaked up a lot of wisdom and encouragement

• friends coming over for play dates and thrown together charcuterie boards

• sitting around bonfires with loved ones and having rich conversations

• picking up beautiful fall leaves from the ground and taking in their colorful vibrancy

• staying in and playing board games as a family (current favs: with kids is Outfoxed! and without kids is Parks)

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As we enter the fall and winter seasons, I’m praying that you embrace the invitation to light a candle every morning and every evening as you build home as a safe place, that you stare with awe at the winter night sky full of stars and feel the crisp air on your cheeks, and that you sit with quiet moments and soak in the Presence.

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