It’s CSA Wednesday! {Chicken Kale Enchiladas}

June 4, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

It’s finally CSA season! I’m so excited about fresh, local, organic produce coming to my doorstep every Wednesday afternoon that I almost can’t wait to get home from my writer’s conference and whip up a batch of these great Chicken Kale Enchiladas.

But at home there’s no nice conveyor belt that bears my dirty dishes off to a place where I don’t have to wash them, so I think I’ll wait a bit longer to come home.

In the meantime, tell me what you’re cooking up this week with your CSA or Farmer’s Market finds. Remember, one of the best ways to be both frugal and local is to shop your farmers in season. We’re getting lots of kale this week with our delivery so here’s one of our favorite ways to eat it. Enjoy!

Chicken Kale Enchiladas
8-12 oz fresh kale (cut leaves from stems and dice stems finely, roll leaves and chop)
2-3 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded (or pull from a rotisserie chicken)
small onion, diced
8 oz block cream cheese (can dice for faster melt)
8 oz monterey jack cheese, shredded
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp taco seasoning
2 tbsp heavy cream (optional)
8 soft whole wheat tortillas

Saute kale stems and onion in butter until soft. Stir in kale leaves until wilted. Add cream cheese and stir until melted. Add chicken, taco seasoning, and mix well. Spoon onto tortilla and roll. Place seam down in a 9×12 baking dish. Spread shredded cheese over tortillas, drizzle with cream, and cover with foil. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes or until bubbly.

Sometimes I add black beans. Sometimes I top the tortillas with diced tomatoes. Sometimes I add salsa to the filling. Sometimes I serve this with salad or guacamole. It’s never the same twice. Perk of being the chief cook and bottle washer.

Finding that Summer Niche (and my Reading List)

June 2, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

We took them to camp yesterday. I miss them already, which is a conundrum because last week when they were home I yelled a little too much. It’s that whole adjusting to summer routine that takes about two weeks. But if I send them off for a week, I’m afraid we’ll never get adjusted.

Too late now.

They’re at Camp Strong Rock this week because I won a raffle. So Annabelle got to go after all, and I’m a little panicky over that. I mean she’s a tough kid. And by tough, I mean picky. I’m trying really hard not to be that parent, so instead I texted my friend Kristi because her husband is the camp director.

See, totally not that parent.

I’m lucky I have friends who put up with me.

In the meantime, I’ve got paperwork for the arts camp they attend and I lead in a couple weeks, VBS volunteers to wrangle, and a beach trip menu to plan.

Because naturally I’m concerned about what we’ll have besides low country boil and homemade pizza.We’re going to Edisto with some friends this year and I’m pretty sure they’ll wish they hadn’t agreed to vacation with the menu planner who is currently writing a novel set at the vacation destination. I plan to get my toes in the sand, and my fingers on a keyboard in the history museum.

Speaking of that novel, I learned at my writer’s conference that one of the most important things you can do as a writer is read.

Gosh, this job is so hard sometimes.

So here’s a smidge of my summer reading list.

I actually already finished The Road to Testament (and it was fabulous). It was written by Eva Marie Everson, whose encouragement at Blue Ridge made me believe this might actually happen someday. The Wedding Dress is by Rachel Hauck who made me feel so welcome over breakfast one morning that I couldn’t wait to read one of her stories. So far, I’m rounding out novels this summer with a little Barbara Kingsolver, because I really like her style and The Girl Who Came Home by Hazel Gaynor, which is for my book club.

I’m also finishing A Million Little Ways by Emily Freeman. It’s one of those books I pick up and put down because I like to ponder in between. And I can’t wait to finally crack open Rhinestone Jesus by Kristen Welch. Someday I’d love to be a part of the Mercy House Ministry the Lord has given her.

In the meantime, I’m finding new little niches of my own this summer. The kids and I were planning a lazy July, but then the big girls and I got cast in The King and I, so we’ll be hanging out at the theater a good bit. But we’re going to make time for hiking and swimming and picnics and reading since that was all they wanted when we made our bucket list last week.

I officially stepped down from MOPS in May, and am fully embracing the call to write and freelance. I’ve got several projects in the works and the kids are starting to see this as mommy’s job, so that’s helping. In addition to the novel, I’m working on some pieces for magazine submission, marketing for my friends Chris and Heidi’s farm, and of course, still musing at the local paper. I’m telling you all this because I want you faithful blog readers to know that while this is certainly not going away, I am going to slow it down for summer and get caught up on begin mom first and writer second. My goal is to write here at least twice a week. I’ve got some more giveaways planned too, so don’t go away!

As I slow down posting, I’m going to be taking the time to employ some of the great blogging advice I received at Blue Ridge as well. Hopefully it will make my site more user friendly and keep you coming back. Until then, have a beautiful week and enjoy all the beauty summer has to offer….fresh vegetables…ice cream…starry nights….mildewing bathing suits because someone forgot to hang it up….

you get the idea.

Did you read about how my kids were all in a wedding? I’m still a puddle over the adorableness.

motherhood · writing

From One Extreme to the Other

May 27, 2014September 30, 2015 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

I spent the first four days of last week just being myself. I went to a writer’s conference. I met agents and editors and successful published authors. I had insightful conversations with incredible people. I focused my writing and took volumes of notes from a man who knows how to tell a story.

I read a book.

It was incredible and soul-filling and light-a-fire encouraging to my hopeful writer self. While I was there, I was a blogger, a novelist-to-be, a social media guru others asked for advice. It was thrilling to say the least.

But then I came home. And I spent the weekend being the mom I most don’t want to be.

Rather than that mom who has found her footing, I was right back to being that mom who was drowning in the weight of expectation.

Let me tell you there’s nothing heavier than the expectation you heap upon yourself.

On Saturday all four of my children were in a family wedding. After I had been gone for nearly a week, I came home, did last day of school honors and parties, packed again, and all of us headed to Atlanta for the weekend.

The sweet bride marrying my husband’s cousin is easygoing and a great believer in family. She never once made me feel like I had to do anything extra than put them in their dresses and have them show up. But of course I felt like I had to do so much more.

Here’s a piece of advice if your daughters are in a wedding. Know your own capacity for handling fancy hair and fancy clothes before you think you can do it all yourself.

I called in reinforcements in the form of my baby sister. She was great.

I was a basket case.

The bride was calm and completely unnerved by the idea that the two year old ringbearers may bolt before they got down the aisle.

I was a bundle of nerves.

So somehow I went from playing the “sure I know what I’m doing” writer mama to the “what have I gotten myself into” mama who was undone by curling irons, hot rollers, and a splash of Sprite.

Of course that splash of Sprite landed directly on the skirt of Annabelle’s dress and when I yelled about the stain, she cried great big crocodile tears that landed directly on the bodice of her dress.

And that’s when I knew I had swung the pendulum of motherhood from one extreme to the other.

I simply can’t be everything to everyone. What I can be, however, is good at who I am and aware of the situations that make me stressed because they are outside my comfort zone. Most of these situations involve instances when I’m sure I’m about to be judged on my children’s behavior and appearance.

Are you catching a theme here?
It’s never about them. It’s always about me. That, friends, is the problem.

Saturday wasn’t supposed to be about me. It was about how a wedding can bring a few hours of pure joy to anyone lucky enough to share it. It was about how Michael and Ashley are high school sweethearts who’ve dated for as long as Joshua and I have been married. It was about how God can cover over all our messes and steam them back into something beautiful–which is what the God-bless-her coordinator did with Annabelle’s dress.

I reached behind me in the minivan and held Annabelle’s hand while we drove to the church. I told her I was sorry and she was beautiful and no one cared if her dress had a little stain because she is more than a dress.

She is beloved by the King and a princess of heaven, and her mama is just a sinner in need of grace.

And a glass of sweet tea. Which I had at the reception while my children danced their hearts out like no one was watching.

They didn’t learn that from me, thank you Jesus. But maybe someday soon, I’ll have the courage to dance like that too.

family · Paynes

A Letter to My Baby Sister Upon Her Graduation

May 17, 2014March 1, 2016 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

Dear Audrey,

Tonight you sat in that stadium made of cold, gray granite under the harshness of flourescent lights that have shone down on six graduations before yours. Those are the same lights and these are the same stands and other than not being able to decide which shade of blue is the true school color, not much has changed since I walked that line sixteen years ago.

And yet, everything has changed.

You’ll learn that about post-high school in a small town life. Nothing changes. But somehow, nothing is ever the same.

Do you remember the class of 1998 graduation? As a family, it was our first go around with this event and we tried to make it special. You wore that blue gingham sundress with the collar that looked like a watermelon and you were a fidgety, feisty two year old who had no idea that I was about to leave for good. Truthfully, to this day, I don’t think you can remember when I lived at home. You were six when I got married, eight when I made you an aunt, and now you’re eighteen and we’re a generation apart. You wore a cap and gown tonight and sat with classmates whose parents were classmates of mine.

It’s that crazy full-circle of life that always comes back around.

I’m proud to be your big sister, you know. We don’t agree and I think you should find a more modest bikini to wear in front of my girls and you think I’m ridiculous old-fashioned, but I think you’re far too beautiful for your own good and you should be cherished by someone who truly gets how incredibly funny and smart and kind you are.

You have a plan and just enough stubbornness to get you through another round of anatomy. When you graduated tonight you officially finished with more high school and college credits than I had, and you probably aren’t going to be calling mama and daddy in the near future to tell them that you think you’d like to major in interdisciplinary studies just so you can take all the classes you like and avoid math. That’s what I did. Then I endured four years of the “but what are you going to do” question. When your focus is Ultrasound Technician no one ever asks that.

Tonight you walked that damp field over the same blades of grass that have grown there for all twenty-eight years one of us has been a part of this school system. As different as the seven of us are, we all have this in common. Our diplomas are stamped ECCHS and on Friday nights when the lights are shining strong and the jerseys are blue and silver, we all remember what it was like to be a part of that high school family.

If we know anything sharing the same DNA, it’s that family takes the good with the bad and no matter how far you may run, there’s always a place that calls you home. You’re part of the Class of 2014 family now. You’re part of a shared experience that’s bigger than the rumors and the breakups and the games that have defined high school. You’re one of the elite who made it out, who plans to take that diploma and go, but when you’re the last of seven, you also already know–

There’s no place like home.

Much love to you my baby sister. I am elated to say we all made it through, but I am more delighted to see the young woman I know you will become.

All my love,
Lindsey

faith · motherhood

How I Became That Mom

May 14, 2014 Lindsey P. BrackettLeave a comment

She was about to go exploring in my cavern of a purse that was draped over the slim back of the tearoom chair. We were sipping sweet tea with my grandmother and had been watching this little one slip away while her mama simply tried to eat her salad. By the time she made it across the small room full of the downtown Atlanta lunch crowd, her sweet mother was in pursuit.

“No, no,” she swatted little hands away from my purse and turned an embarrassed face to me. “I’m so sorry.”

That’s when I got to say it. That’s when words came out that have the ability to ease and emphasize and encourage. “No big deal! I have four of my own.”

Her eyes widened a bit with that oh-goodness-I-couldn’t-do-that look I’m so familiar with. We talked idle chitchat about baby ages and stages and my sisters laughed with us about the nuances of attempting to dine with toddlers.

She went back to her party and I went back to my lunch and it was only later that I began to realize the shift that’s happening in my motherhood life.

I’ve become that mom. The one who looks like she knows what she’s doing simply because four kids in I’ve finally learned how to have more good days than bad. It’s been a slow lift in heart and soul that’s bringing me up out of the sea of motherhood I’ve been drowning in for far too long. Maybe it’s the knowledge that we are truly past that new baby stage and are coming to the edge of a parenthood that doesn’t always have a diaper bag and a sheen of exhaustion. Maybe it’s the support I have from an amazing group of women who man their own trenches of laundry and dishes and tantrums with me on a regular basis. Women who come over in the flesh for coffee and women who respond to tweets and pleas from across the continent have been helping me realize that motherhood can be messy beautiful and full of grace.

Or maybe it’s because I’m making a much more conscious effort to abide daily in the only Word that really matters. I’m writing it out, painstakingly in that pink hardbound journal a Sunday School friend sent when my grandfather died. Its pages of quiet script reveal early morning meetings with my Maker and hard scratchings out of the feelings that lie just beneath the surface of my heart. I’m pounding away trying to understand, digging deep trying to comprehend, but all I keep coming back to is simplistic truth.

Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so.

Seeking to understand Jesus is like what I’m coming to realize about motherhood after nearly ten years and ten thousand wads of tissue crumpled with my tears.

It doesn’t have to be hard.
It doesn’t have to be incomprehensible.
It just has to be.

Mothering little ones is sacred, holy work no one is ever ready enough or trained enough or good enough for. It’s all grace. It’s all forgiveness. It’s all second chances, get up again and again and again and tuck the child in and whisper the story and say the love.

It’s not mean to be a frantic treading of water, but a slow swim in the deep with a great God who loves you and your children enough to give you each other.

I’m not telling you I’ve turned a corner and everyday from here on is all light and joy, but I can promise you this. If you can get your head up above water long enough to breath a good, deep breath of God’s abundance, you’ll find yourself surfacing more than drowning.

For some great resources and groups for a Christ-centered Bible study led by Godly women check out Hello Mornings and Good Morning Girls. I’m reveling in Jesus Calling right now and my Holy Bible app gets more use than Twitter. For wonderful reads on motherhood I recommend Surprised by Motherhood by Lisa Jo Baker and Desperate: Hope for the Mom Who Needs to Breathe by Sarah Mae.