Because that would lead to being up to no good, after all. My inbox has filled up today with advice on how to handle potentially volatile family dinner conversations tomorrow, and I’m not sure about your fam, but mine has always tended toward the loud and dramatic, so we already had a “no discussing” rule.
We’ve also always had the saying “family event isn’t over until somebody cries and Calley falls asleep on the couch.”
Love you, Aunt Calley 🙂
Anyhow, it’s a bit futile to believe somebody won’t bring up the state of America since it’s apparently all anybody ever wants to talk about, but if you’re looking for some other topics of discussion, here’s what the preteen girls and I came up with on our drive over the mountain today.
Feel free to discuss…
The best book you read this year. My girls’ votes were in for Percy Jackson. My top is All the Light We Cannot See. It’s followed closely by Gods in Alabama, but that might lead to a football discussion and we ban those at our house. Maybe I’ll change my answer to Jackson’s latest, The Opposite of Everyone. (Which is pretty much how some of us feel.)
The trend you’re finally embracing. My twelve-year-old is loving her boots and Simply Southern tees. Her cousin likes the black and white Nikes, and as for me? I’m finally going to break down and buy some skinny jeans.
The best show you’re watching (even if Netflix means you’re behind the rest of the world). All the girls voted When Calls the Heart, which I love because it’s family friendly and Brian Bird is one of my favorite people to hang out with at writers’ conferences, but confession: we also got sucked into Once Upon a Time. I was pretty questionable about this until after season 3. The villain becomes a hero? Redemption story? I’m all in.
What you’d like for Christmas–materialism only. No wishing for any of those abstract verbs. One of mine wants straps for her Eno, and one wants more American Girl (ahem, Target knockoff) playthings, and the littles want a swing set because we left ours at the the old house.
And I want a drama-free family event where no one cries. But I’m all good with naps on the couch, and apparently, breaking my own rules.
Today those literal hills I can cast my eyes and cares upon are shrouded in a bluish haze. We’d think a storm was coming, here, in drought-cracked North Georgia, but those aren’t thunderclouds on our horizon.
Smoke hangs lazy in the air, hovering over our pine tree tops and clinging to my big-baby-boy’s too short hair. They say it’s coming down the mountain, sweeping in from the wildfires burning not-quite out of control along the Appalachian Trail and in the Cohutta Wilderness. They say the land is so dry the fire catches quick and burns fast and when the cold finally realized it’s November and came to visit, that frost warning came with smoke.
My girls want to know why they aren’t fighting it–they’re looking for the helpers you know. Always believing in the safety of our servicemen and their daddy because they are children and all children deserve to believe they are in a safe place. I wish I could give that comfort to so many hurting and fearful right now.
I tell them as we bump over the subdivision’s private road that has a few ruts–a reminder that no place heeds perfection long–a fire can be allowed to burn and there’s nothing to worry. The underbrush must be cleared for new growth, and the fire will purify the soil and make everything come back brighter and greener and stronger.
I remind them green trees don’t burn, remember what Daddy always said about gathering wood for the bonfire? When the tree is alive, it takes an awfully big fire to bring it down.
I remind myself.
Green trees don’t burn. Life flows through roots and branches and scorch marks might be born for a lifetime, but in the spring, the buds will burst right open.
As long as we have life in us, as long as hope stamps out fear, we can endure a burning of the underbrush.
I’m not getting on Facebook. You can follow me over on Instagram or Twitter or send me an email the old-fashioned way.
I’m not reading/finishing books I don’t like. There are a couple sitting open on my nightstand that aren’t feeding my soul right now. So, done.
I’m not eating all the junk like I have the last several days and weeks. It makes me feel bad and I don’t need that.
I’m not drinking coffee when tea will do. For much the same reason as above and because my girls like tea time.
Anything you’re not doing? I think we’re all in a place where we want to take a step back and breathe past the election and the drought and the hurricane and the fear.
Step on up to the front porch and welcome Kirsten from Sweet Tea & Saving Grace. We’re blog friends and heart sisters because y’all know you’ve heard me say this before — no is a word I need to use more often. Check out Kirsten’s site sometime this week. Her content and heart are sweeter than McDonald’s tea. I promise.
The alarm next to my head began to buzz at the usual 5:00 am, alerting my body and mind that it was time to begin yet another day – a day of a 3-hour round-trip commute to a job I hated, a quick dinner with the family, and working on my blog until I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
But this particular morning when that alarm began ringing, something felt different. Something felt off.
Rewind to about six months prior when a book found me. I didn’t go seeking this book, mind you. I was in a local bookstore looking for a new Bible study when I stumbled across “Anything” by Jennie Allen. I had recently read a blog post about her and suddenly she was showing up everywhere, including on this book shelf in this bookstore. Something compelled me to pick it up and read…and as I read, I was immediately convicted, and wanted more.
That afternoon, I read the book cover to cover, then re-read it several times over the following months.
Jennie tells the story of she and her husband and their willingness, albeit with noted apprehension, to give God “anything”…and to mean it. She talks about how reluctant we are to give God the big things, the really important things, the things that are already His but we refuse to relinquish complete control. And she tells of a prayer she & her husband prayed finally letting go and telling God, “Anything. Anything you want, it’s Yours.”
So I prayed. More times than I can count over those months that passed, I prayed, and repeatedly gave God my “Anything”.
Now, I’ve been a Christian my whole life, and yet here I was expecting the clouds to part and angels to sing every time I prayed that prayer. I knew better. I knew that God would take my “anything” whenever He wanted, not when I was ready to give it to Him.
Six months pass. I had all but stopped praying that prayer. I was 3 ½ years into building a blog that I hoped would turn into a business. I spent countless hours throwing every ounce of time, energy, and money into it and was oddly pleased when my only return was an increase in pageviews and Facebook fans. But I somehow felt I was finally at my peak.
I woke up on this ordinary morning with a heaviness on my chest. And I knew.
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, I knew God had come to collect my “anything”, and I knew what it was. Yet, I resisted. I argued. I went through the motions of my morning – shower, makeup, hair, outfit – all the while, arguing with God that I wasn’t ready to give up my blog, that I was finally seeing success, that if He would give me just six months, I’d walk away.
Suddenly, I was hit with such a force in my chest it felt as if I’d been punched hard, and it brought me to my knees. I couldn’t see my own reflection in the bathroom mirror anymore. Instead, my head was filled with visions. I saw my daughter, almost 12 years old, dealing with hormones she’d never experienced before, questioning everything, needing answers. And I was in my office working on my blog.
I saw my husband, alone on the couch, watching TV and eating dinner without me. I was in my office working on my blog.
I saw missed opportunities for quality time spent with friends, family… I saw my own health deteriorating because I didn’t make time to care for myself.
Finally, with tears streaming down my face and me in a crumpled heap on the bathroom floor, I surrendered.
Immediately, I felt relief. The weight in my chest vanished and I felt peace. My vision cleared, yet I continued to cry. I told God that yes, He could have “anything”. And I meant it.
After a while, I cleaned up my face and headed to work. As soon as I sat down in front of my computer, I typed out a blog post – what would be my last for more than six months. I told this entire story to my readers. I emailed people with whom I had made commitments and apologized, but told them I could no longer honor those commitments.
And I quit. Just like that.
Now for those of you who don’t blog, you might not see this as such a big sacrifice. But my blog had become my passion, my identity. And walking away was like tearing off a piece of me and abandoning it. I had spent 3 ½ years of my life nurturing this thing, building this thing… It was mine. It was me!
But it never was. It was His. And He took it back.
Over the six months that followed, I began to realize what I had been missing. My relationships with my husband and daughter improved dramatically, and I began to realize what it was about blogging that I was so passionate about to begin with.
Kirsten, daughter Marley, and her mom
It wasn’t the pageviews, the Facebook followers, the “status”. It was the stories and the community. After a while, I began to ask God if I could start over with my blog, but do it His way. And in May of 2014, He said “yes”.
I rebranded to Sweet Tea & Saving Grace, but the name wasn’t the only thing that changed. My entire mindset has changed since then. I no longer chase numbers, and I will never allow myself to get lost in the to-do’s.
Since my return to blogging in May of 2014, God has blessed me and my family tremendously. I’ve created an entire business that allows me to work from home and teach other bloggers and creatives how to build their own brand of success with their own rules. It’s a dream come true.
I’m often asked how I “do it all” – handle being a wife and mom, run a business, manage two blogs, host events, speak at conferences, work with clients. And the short answer is, I don’t. Nobody does.
The longer answer goes more like this:
Before I ever picked up my proverbial blogging pen again in 2014, I made a list of my priorities. Every decision I have to make for my blog or business gets weighed against those priorities. When an opportunity arises, I ask myself if the opportunity will (a) benefit my business and help me grow, or challenge me professionally, or (b) if it will either benefit or take away from my priorities.
I’ve learned to take things off my plate when life gets too stressful or busy, and I do so without the guilt I used to feel. I always have dinner with my family at the dinner table. I go fishing with my husband on random Tuesday afternoons. I step away from work to go for a walk with my now 14-year old daughter who, remarkably, actually wants to spend time with me, so I soak it up.
Fishing with husband, Mark, on a random afternoon
I work because we have to have an income, and I’m fortunate enough to have work that brings me joy. But at the end of my life, I won’t be thinking about all those blog posts I wrote, or the clients I helped. I’ll be reminiscing of all the experiences I had with the people I love most.
I’ve learned that saying “no” often means saying “yes”. We say “no” to things that don’t honor our priorities in order to say “yes” to the things that matter. We can’t do it all. Nobody can. Well, God can. He can do “anything”.
Kirsten is the owner of Sweet Tea, LLC, which is home to all of her educational content, including blog posts, tutorials, webinars, ebooks, courses, 1:1 coaching, email services and a future membership site. She also blogs at Sweet Tea & Saving Grace, a Southern Christian lifestyle blog, where she shares her home, life and faith with anyone who wants to mingle on her front porch.
Kirsten lives in the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband Mark, teenage daughter Marley, and their three dogs, Savannah, Dakota, and Daisy Mae. She thrives on sweet tea & sunshine, has finally learned to embrace her natural curl, and says “y’all” entirely too often.
This week alone my three-year-old dressed himself three times.
Each time we had to negotiate a change of shirt or shorts or underwear because he was dressing himself from the dirty laundry pile on the floor.
We ran out of milk, lunch meat, bread, peanut butter, and fruit all on the same day. I packed my kids cheese and crackers for lunch, fixed grits for breakfast, and promised them I’d try to go to the store. They’d been telling me for two days we were running out of food. (We have plenty of food. It’s just all in the freezer or requires prep more advanced than my six-year-old’s skills.)
I should also mention that the freezer is hidden behind the piles of clean clothes that haven’t migrated out of the laundry room yet.
I used all my brain power writing and editing yesterday morning so I gave up the idea of price matching and instead came home with the biggest jar of peanut butter I could find.
I should also mention that at this moment Gus is eating powdered donuts for lunch.
People love to remind me I can’t do it all. Nope, I can’t.
People also ask me how the book is coming. Well, I’ll tell you. Pretty much everyday I hold my head in my hands and wonder how bad the reviews will be and why I can’t think of a phrase other than “tilted his head” to use in conversation.
I get a little sick to my stomach thinking about how I can never write as well as ________________ (insert name of whatever author I’m currently reading).
I wonder if the story is too idealistic, too flawed, too close to my home and heart. I wonder if my grandmother would be proud.
Remembering that this the story God gave me–word by word, moment by moment, through the eyes of editors and friends and in the windows of my own heart–that definitely helps. My novel is about letting go, embracing grace, appreciating how every flaw in your past can make you who you are today.
Mine has certainly made me. And my present re-makes me every day.
So some things have to go. Like clean floors and big savings and making sure Gus matches. For now, it’s just enough that his clothes are clean.
Our keynote speaker was Robert Benson who can talk eucharist and Yankee baseball in the same sentence. My only quandary after hearing him speak is which book to read first. I’m leaning toward Living Prayer because a review says Benson “makes the ordinary events of life seem mystical and the mystical seem ordinary.” Which is the consistent cry of my heart and probably why I was moved hearing this man speak about life and art and writing and Jesus.
“Hurry,” he chastised softly one morning, “is no posture for a writer.”
Everyday I get out of bed and stumble over to the preset coffee maker and pour a cup. I nestle into a corner of our couch and I study and pray and journal. Sometimes I blog or read or socialize with others awake in the dim light of dawn.
Then my kids wake up and rush, rush, rush and hurry, hurry, hurry become my mantra. Somewhere between the turning over of the clock from 6:29 to 6:30 my slow easy morning becomes a winded sprint and there’s yelling and fussing and so much stress.
Hurry is no posture for a mother either.
When I hurry–when I push and prod and pull my kids through our morning routine–I set a tone for the rest of our day. I wake them with the notion that we are already behind and we must rush to catch up.
What if instead I woke them with the notion that we have a whole day of discovering God’s goodness upon us? What if I saw the morning as a filter through which the rest of our moments, our comings and goings, sifted through? What if instead of posturing hurry, I postured slow?
Sometimes I let them sleep in until almost seven. I make pancakes or oatmeal and hot tea for little sore throats. I pack up my computer so it’s not taken out until my work day has resumed and I listen when they chatter and I smile when they laugh.
I promise not to yell.
We load the banged-up minivan and we run through the day on the short drive to school without actually having to run.
And the only difference between when we get to school on these days and when we get to school on others is me.
Me.
My actions didn’t change. Lunches still got packed. Shoes still got lost and then found. Breakfast dishes were left on the table and the cat might have been left in the house.
But my attitude said slow down. Savor. Sip. Stow away the goodness and the glory in the mess and the broken.
Hurry, my friends, is no posture for anyone.
Slow down. Look around. Catch your breath.
You’ll get there no matter the route you take. But the difference will be in the journey.
Robert Benson with me on the last day of conference.
Lindsey P. Brackett 