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Aiyeee wow. My cup runneth over. What a blessed morning I’ve had!

It started with a loaf of banana bread. Just humble banana bread, baked last night in order to have a loaf to bring on a visit I made this morning. It was a new recipe as part of the little ongoing quest I’ve had to find a good yeasted banana bread. Well sistah, I found it. Half wheat, half white, lots of banana, nuts, a good texture, a thick crust, it has everything needed. Soft, chewy, and moist, it was like a slice of goodness on my plate. I sliced it thick, spread it with cream cheese that had formed thickly and disgarded it’s whey overnight, and let a stream of honey rain over the lot of it. The children found it a welcome change from “Porridge Made 50 Ways”; we had smiles and bedhead and bathrobes with banana bread and coffee at sunrise.

We’ve been trying a new experiment with our oldest too.  He’s almost 11 and doesn’t like to go out for morning errands. So he’s been giving staying home a try, provided we all have phone communication and Dad is at work 5 minutes away. I leave him with a list of chores or school work and he knows how to cook well enough to have something going by the time I get home. Today it was “do the bathrooms, the chickens, and get the chili on”. Dad even brought home a surprise guest for lunch and Andrew had all the work done, the house picked up, and his chili is really good!

He missed out a bit though….our visit this morning was with an older couple in our church, grandparents a few times over who love children, and the wife is a wood carver. I didn’t get to see her studio shop but I did see her scrapbook of the crosses she’s carved. I don’t think words can describe them….they are magnificent. As a woodworker’s daughter I am already predisposed to have a soft spot for the warmth of wood; the scent of sawdust is a reassuring comfort. But to see wood carved this way….it reminded me of “even the rocks cry out”. I was blessed by their openness and hospitality and when a day holds something as sweet as that, one doesn’t expect anything better.

Ah! But there was more. Our next stop was around the corner at church for the Akathist, a short prayer service. Prayers in Orthodoxy are sung and in this small group, everyone participates. Yes, those of you who have known me for years and know “Tia doesn’t pray out loud” would be shocked to hear it but not as much as I am….even as I do it I’m amazed there is a single sound leaving my lips! I marvel even more at how safe I feel in that little room.  But the selection today was (I think) called the Akathist to the Theotokos and focused on the comfort of sorrows, extremely applicable to my life and a balm to sing.

Immediately after that, before I could get angsty about if I’d done everything right, Jane invited me to her shop. It’s an alteration/sewing shop called Martha’s Needle. She reassurred me it was kid-friendly and off we headed. And WOW!! More childhood comfort…I’m very at ease in a sewing room. Some of my earliest memories involve stray threads beneath a sewing machine. Jane’s shop is an artist’s studio as she is also a quilter and doll maker.

This is Jane and Eustiss, a doll she made and who really seems to have his own personality (and indeed, his own Jane-voice too!). I used this as my Project 365 photo today.

This photo doesn’t do the quilt justice. In the blue bands there are lines upon lines of scripture embroidered. The details are amazing; the texture kept calling my hands out to touch it and then my mind would pull my hand back. These pieces of art caused my mouth to gape in awe.

The thread reminded me of my mom and was a good example of the depth and color of my day. Next door to Jane’s shop is an ice cream shop. The smell of waffle cones enticed us and she walked us over to see the Polish owner’s large collection of pigs. Turns out the ice cream is all homemade with natural ingredients! “Oh and he’s got about six kinds of chocolate right now”, Jane whispered to me. A pint of Rocky Road, the good kind, with real chunks of marshmallow, and a pint of Death By Chocolate later and I had to pack up my tired toddler and head home.

David and his lunch guest left while I was driving home; snow flurried onto my windshield and cows huddled in clusters.

I’ve been thinking of the concept of implosion, of what happens when all the energy is focused in the center. I think for most of the previous year I felt like I was imploding….my only focus was on our own family and our four walls. Rarely did anyone accept an invitation over though we did have several invitations out. That aided an environment where we were “consumers” but not able to give back. The voices around me were largely encouraging me to have as my only focus my own children and being a housewife. Good things surely, and necessary as they are my primary charge. But as it became my only world, we weakened rather than strengthened.

Implosion: To collapse inward violently. Does that sound like depression to anyone? It describes what I felt in July and August of last year very well, though not so much did I think I was depressed as I felt a crisis of my entire identity, most especially my spiritual self and what the purpose of even having one was.

I feel now like I’m experiencing a wonderful metamorphasis of the soul. Waking up after a long winter of some kind,  and though the winter held it’s beauty as well, it wasn’t meant to last as long as it did.  And something interesting is happening. As the focus shifts from our own four walls, a feeling of strength is rising.

Well, I’m rambling. Like I said, my cup is running over. It’s been a good day.

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