‘Cheer up! Get up! He’s calling you.’ (Mark 10:49)

Those words (first spoken to the blind man Bartimaeus and then poured quietly into my cup by my father-in-law over afternoon tea) might be just the thing to keep me in the trade winds and out of the potential doldrums of my brand new strangely lonely unbelievably exciting life of stay-at-home-mom / freelance-writer. The enormity of my fairly drastic direction change really only dropped on me last week. Like an anvil. A well-meaning but possibly dangerous anvil. I’m still finding my rhythm and figuring out how to start living the dream. So more than ever I’m trying not to blink. Trying not to miss a thing. Polishing the ordinary until the extraordinary shines and every day is a eucharisteo day.

The next 39 things:

79 The first evening star

80 Avocados

81 Med-Lemon

82 When everything green in the meal comes from the kitchen garden

83 Dinners under African skies with friends on hot summer nights

84 The boys relishing their food – happy focused silent savouring

85 Roses from Murray

86 Peaceful, symbiotic, win-win play dates

87 The world going quiet for another night after a full day of life

88 Park swings

89 Andy Stanley

90 Big Al’s chips

91 Sky yellow and expectant before a storm at dusk

92 Ena’s farmyard in the city

93 Breakfast with Aunty Pam

94 An email from Blantyre, typed under a tin roof in torrential rain, and feeling like I’m there

95 Old-school advice (like, teach your children to love reading and to listen first time)

96 Murray taking the morning off

97 All the filing finally filed

98 Cranberry juice

99 An early night…

100 …And Scott only waking once

101 Kirsty passing chocolate down the row at the parents’ conference

102 Aircon

103 An overcast morning after the heat wave

104 Miss-you messages from my St Alban’s (ex-)colleagues

105 Early evening walk around the block

106 Maxalt for migraines

107 Reading The Wishing Chair with Cam

108 Two sets of little fingernails and toenails clipped neat and short for the week

109 Very yellow fresh organic straight-from-the-coop scrambled eggs

110 The promise of baby Annabelle Grace Bester

111 The triumph of Cam’s first day of Grade 00

112 A spontaneous serendipitous coffee with Coral at the Wimpy

113 Cam’s colourful imagery and bizarre descriptions (e.g. ‘I went bursting open with a crackle!’)

114 Supertubes

115 Lola wagging in the driveway when I get home

116 The way Maria hugs our boys

117 Feeling safe

 

I so want to hear your eucharisteo list.

(Photo credit: hougaardmalan.com)