Scripps Sundays

I am so glad that this resonated with you earlier this week. I just wanted to share it again to remind you that you are beautiful, beloved, and enough- just as you are. Can't wait to see you on Friday night!  In this season of feasting from Thanksgiving to Christmas a lie can seep into our heads—that come the new year, we will take back the free rein we’ve been giving our bodies, our appetites, and whip them into submission as our dreaded New Year’s resolution. May I invite you, instead, to extend peace to the beautiful home God has given your soul. Hush the violent self talk about your body, dear heart. Look at the oak tree and her honorable life marked down to the very bones of her body. Each year of growth and change and breaking and reaching still higher for the heavens marked with ring upon ring of hard, beautiful life that she doesn’t try to hide. When did disguise become necessary to being a woman? Instead, the oak trees bend and sing in the wind, their rings recognizing lay...

 In a couple of my classes at the end of this quarter, I used a worksheet from a book called  Onward: Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Educators . I chose to do this as the book highlights the theme of "Focusing on the Bright Spots" for November and December when the days are short & dark and when the exhaustion from fall is real (especially during the end of the semester which is overwhelming and busy.)  This exercise is one that I had them do, and I thought you would love it too.  I jotted down a few things on my list as students were generating their own lists. One of them was to pay attention on my bike ride, and lo and behold, look at the gifts that awaited me on my way home on my bike yesterday. This was indeed worth savoring!