Tag: beauty
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Gardening in the Rain
In case you’re wondering, our garden is still growing weeds. I’m learning that this is how it goes (so they say): you pull the weeds, they’re gone; then the weeds grow back, and you’re down in the dirt again.
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Our Secret Garden
Our garden is growing weeds. We don’t know what to expect in these garden beds because we weren’t the ones who planted them. We inherited them when we bought the house in the dead of winter, bare trees and frosted beds. So I’ve been waiting and watching, checking each morning to see what pops up,…
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When Life Goes Off-Roading
A baby lost. Singleness prolonged. Families incomplete. I always feel different, changed in some deep way when I hear stories like these about faithful people who have plowed through serious heartbreak. No one expects to lose a newborn baby, one you’ve carried around for nine months, rubbing your belly while whispering prayers of forever. No…
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Finding Beauty in the Ashes
More and more, I’m starting to believe in the quieting of pain. For some time, I subscribed to the pray-it-all-away mentality, the belief that God will surely eliminate the pain, the fear, the grief entirely. I’ve held out for the day when my anxious self will disappear, thinking I’m less-than until that day arrives when…
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Inviting the Messiness of Transformation
This post is part of a new project that I’m working on. Visit Jess Alston’s website to learn more about the Dig Deep Podcast. A few years ago, I participated as an assistant (i.e., hand me that weird-shaped thing that looks like it might do something useful) for the world’s longest bathroom renovation project in…
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M(r)s. Jogger
I spend my days watching people. Yes, I recognize that this sounds creepy, but I assure you, it’s nothing like that creepster watching kids at the playground that Netflix would turn into a documentary that goes viral. I watch with innocence and wonder, marveling and curiosity. I watch to learn how to live and breathe…
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On needing less, less, less
I hesitate to bold this title on the page, wishing to change the default of all uppercase, on this journey for more and more quiet. You see, I’ve recently discovered minimalism, handed the key to a secret world. People out there think this recipe can save them, that trimming down will cut the hefty heartbreak…
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The End of a Winter Journal
I wonder if it’s worth counting how many mornings over the last four months I scribbled about watching the pink sunrise while listening to the coffee drip from the kitchen just behind me. Each time, I wrote it as if it was a new thought, a new sight, a new sound. And yet, there’s nothing…
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Do you know how to count it all joy?
I saw a man fishing at the lake yesterday. He wore black knee-high boots and stood in the water that came about halfway up his boots. I bet the water felt cold, as we’ve barely kicked the frost in Maryland. He just kept standing there in his baggy khakis draped over his boots, holding his…
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I will never forget the year of the flowers
Something beautiful happened in Baltimore yesterday: thermometers reached 78 degrees on February 21—a date usually blanketed with snow. Naturally, I found a path near water to walk at lunch and stopped for post-Valentine’s-ridiculously-on-sale flowers on the way home. Today I put on a shirt that looks exactly like a shirt would look if the…
Ashley Fenker 