I have dirt under my fingernails

/

and my face is sunburned and my hair is crazy curly with humidity and wind. We've been outdoors for days now and it's very good. But I'm way behind on --ahem--business. Please read this column to which I was supposed to link last week. It's a Lent sort of thing and you only have a few days before Lent is over. Besides, it will make my editor happy.

Who does God Want You to Be?

We Have Winners!

/

The winners of the Bloggity Bigday Giveaway are:

Spud and Chloe at the Farm will inspire

Emily Hammer who said:

Your blog has touched my life and mothering in so many ways ~ thank you for that gift! Since I already own 2 of the lovely books listed...I would love to have Spud and Chloe at the Farm. Thank you so much for this opportunity!
God Bless You!

 

Small Steps will find its way to

Renee, who  said:

I would love a Small Steps for Catholic Moms. I am expecting baby #9, at age 45, and feel like my life is being taken in leaps and bounds. I want so much to take smaller, simpler steps.

Thank you for this blog. You have the perfect balance between reality and grace. You show your struggles, but you also share the grace you depend upon to live your life with joy. I want to be like you when I grow up ;)

Happy Anniversary!

Real Learning goes to

Elizabeth, your blog was one of the very first I ever read in the blogosphere! I ran into you from Dawn at Sun and Candlelight 4 years ago and have been with you through two pregnancies! Your honesty and spirituality have kept me coming back. My grandmother is catholic but my family is protestant. More than anything else here I see Jesus in you and have gleaned so much for my own family about your faith that I have incorporated into my own faith. I have cried and laughed with you, which seems so odd since we have never even talked before! Your CM homeschool ways have stuck with me no matter what other new ideas I've tried and I recently bumped into an old article of yours about living books that made me fall for this educational lifestyle all over again!

If a book should come my way it would have to be your Real Learning. I have your Small Steps and would love the knitting book except I can't knit! Have always wanted to read your original book.

Thanks for being here as a voice of truth in the big internet world of voices.

Please email with your mailing address and I'll get your prize out to you!

 

Five Minute Friday: Distance

/

Mike is in Portland this morning. Yesterday, he was in Salt Lake City. Monday it was Houston. Distance. For the last 23 years of married life, there has been distance. Come to think of it, our engagement involved distance, too. We know distance. We know how to time phone calls for 8:00 my time/5:00 his time when he's working on the west coast. At home, we know how to shift the rhythms and expectations of a Sunday morning because someone has just arrived on the red-eye. We know exactly how long it takes to get to the airport.

We know homecomings. And we like them.

It won't be long now, just a few short weeks, and this life of frequent flier miles will come to a close. New job. Not nearly so much distance. Am I thrilled to pieces? Well, sure. I am. Truth be told, I'm a little nervous, too. Will he like being around all the time? Will we adjust to being in each other's spaces on the weekends. Actually, he will be in my space, won't he, because up until now, his weekend space was a production truck? I want him, look forward to him being there, but worry just a little that this space, this place called "home," might have looked better to him from a distance.

I'm re-thinking the weekend style, re-tooling around the house, almost as if I'm expecting an important guest. But he's not a guest. He's the person and the personality that has always felt "missing"--very much there in spirit as we go about our weekend busyness, but still off in the distance of the regular routine. Big gaping, 6'4" Daddy-sized hole that is filled with aching loneliness.

I wonder how many times I've driven to the airport since we moved to this neighborhood. I wonder how many times I've watched him zip that old green suitcase closed and swallowed hard so that I could say goodbye and he wouldn't hear the lump in my throat. I wonder how many weddings, funerals, and social gatherings of families I have attended without him, feeling awkward and out of place in the company of couples. I wonder how many times I've told a child," Daddy's working. He took an airplane to XXX." How many times I've rocked and distracted and tried to tell myself that he or she would be just fine, when really we were just limping along. I wonder how wonderful it is to live together all the time without distance.

I think I'm going to like discovering the answer.

Got five minutes? Tell us about Distance. No editing, no fussing, just five minutes of writing. And then link up over at Gypsy Mama's place.