A Still Life

After attending a community yard sale, I am deep cleaning the house this morning. In obvious news: we have too much stuff. I am overwhelmed by the STUFF in my house, the STUFF that clutters the floor of each room, the STUFF discarded by families as children grow, and the STUFF that we don’t need and don’t use but keep around.

Coming soon: I’ll be leading a Wednesday night session on Too Much Stuff in June. We’ll talk about the faith & ecological connections to all of this STUFF.

For now: I’m reading here to remind myself about the crisis of STUFF. And here for inspiration to live with less STUFF.

Alright. That restored my energy to return to the cleaning, decluttering, stuff-sorting morning. Wish me luck.

A sweet pink dress from my childhood. The classic Pooh feature film. A little chocolate snack after a two-year-old exam. Pure goodness and sweetness. I could gobble her up.

(Note: TV on the floor because I’m painting the cabinet. I can’t be stopped!)

I didn’t post a 10 week update in my wellness journey for a couple of reasons. First, this is a hodge-podge kind of life blog and not a proper fitness blog. Even every 5 weeks feels like a lot. But the truer reason is probably that things started to slow down between weeks 5 and 10 and then feel like they’ve all but stalled in 10-15.

That’s not entirely accurate, though. As much as I don’t want these practices to be about weight-loss, I know that I’ve made them about weight loss. And I lost weight fast in those first several weeks. It doesn’t help that almost everyone felt the compulsion to say, “You’ll plateau,” just as soon as I started losing. But the loss has kind of puttered here at week 15, though I know in my mind that weight is just one indicator of fitness. But I’ll leave the thoughts on keeping perspective, staying motivated, and pushing through lulls to the fitness bloggers who do it so well and impress the socks off me.

So the stats at 15 weeks are:

- # of workouts: 72 (set a goal of only 3 per week, so this is a 4.8/wk avg; 5/wk cardio + 6/wk Pilates feels best)
- inches lost on arms/waist/hips/thighs: -15″ (the biggest reward came here in the first 5 wks, but I can feel how strong I’ve gotten, particularly in my legs)
- BMI reduced:  -2.1 (Dang it. This number takes FOR. EVER. to get down to my goal. Stink.)
- total pounds lost: -12.8

You can hear how I’m qualifying these numbers, and I’m most frustrated about the pounds one. I’ve dipped lower than that and then popped up higher than that and have basically bounced at the same weight for a full four weeks. Yes, it’s not about the weight. Yes, my body is still changing and becoming stronger and healthier. Yes, I am still sticking with the Master Plan in both my short-term and long-term goals. But I’d like to push through the next two weeks and see a scale reward for it.

Other victories:

- I’m following a proper running plan now and am starting week 6 of that. I have tried running longer than the plan once (12 minutes) but couldn’t repeat it in the same run (meaning run 12, walk, run 12). I’ll be there in another two weeks or so.
- I did walk the 5k with friends back in March. We only ran a tiny bit of it, but that’s ok. I wasn’t doing the interval training plan back then, so I’m glad I’m taking this slow and learning things like how my feet strike before I try again.
- I have packed up my largest clothes and have dropped two sizes in jeans. That is a fun reward in itself.

Quite enough of all that. If you’re curious about who might inspire you in your own wellness journey, start with Sheryl or Jayme or Bill & Kristen. Click on their blog-rolls and just keep reading and clicking. Lots of inspiration to discover and embrace!

The old green bench:

The fantastic new blue bench:

In John 10, Jesus addresses a group of religious leaders and explains his mission and describes the kind of life that God wants for all people. Jesus tells them that his Way is like a gate that guides sheep to green pasture and that he has come that all may have life; full life, abundant, overflowing life, more and better life than people ever dreamed of. Much of Jesus’ teaching returns to this idea of living well in the fullness of what God imagines life could be.

The Apostle Paul expands on this notion of living well in many of his letters, and the passage we just heard from Romans 12 is a beautiful elaboration on what life, lived in the fullness of God, might look like.

Love from the center of who you are…hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply

Don’t quit in hard times…be inventive in hospitality.

Bless your enemies…Laugh with your friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other…discover beauty in everyone.

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Today is gorgeous. GORGEOUS! The Boy and My Love are off to soccer, The Girl is about to take a nap, and there are so many ways I want to spend this day that I can’t decide where to start. Will I paint furniture on the front porch? Will I weed the walk? Will I start planting our pea seedlings? No matter what wins, I will soak up the sun and savor this amazing afternoon.

I am thankful for the luxury of choice and time. I am thankful for the luxury of an empty schedule. I am thankful for a gentle, kind, funny spouse. I am thankful for the delightful evening out we shared last night that “ended too soon,” he said. I am thankful for how much we enjoy each other after a dozen years in relationship and ten years in marriage. I am thankful for funny children, precocious as they may be, who keep life interesting and busy and full. Sure, there are plenty of things in life that are not perfect and are not as I wish for them to be. But there is so much more that is better than I could have ever asked or imagined. For all those things, I am thankful.

So get off the computer, friends. Go, soak up the sun. And if it’s not sunny where you are today, then sit and make a good, sunny, long list of all the things in your life for which you give thanks. Notice the abundance that surrounds you!

I like lists, I keep lists in my head, I even read about lists. When my friend Lauren shared these free printables recently, I started thinking about how to digitize some of my routine lists. I order my grocery trips around parts of the store to make it faster when little hands are reaching out of the car cart in front of me. If your brain works like mine, and this list will help you, then add it to your routine. I used it for the first time today and came home and made a couple of changes. Let me know what you think! Click here for: the shopping list. Updated: a second list.

I mentioned the mirror that I purchased this week:

Now I’m trying to decide exactly where to hang it (higher than the nail that was already in this spot) and whether or not to paint it. If I paint it, I think I want to paint this, too:

This bench was made for us by a family friend as a wedding gift (10 years ago next week!), and we clearly use it and abuse it. The wedding bench deserves better treatment and could be a little bright spot in this dark corner. But what color? I like this bench and may do both the mirror and wedding bench in the same blue:

(source forgotten. sorry.)

Then today, I also bought this little side table:

It needs some love. It’s been well used, and I like that. In its next life, this will be my daughter’s bedside table. While she’s still in her crib (where I hope she’ll remain for many, many more months!), we’ll use it as a side table for reading books. The chair in her room now is the chair that sat in my room as a child. I didn’t know until last week that the chair also belonged to my mother. We’ll add this small piece (a church yard sale find) and cherish the untold stories from the child whose art will always remain.

The piece has been sanded and cleaned, ready for white paint and a sweet drawer pull.

It is luxury to sit around thinking of how to decorate one’s home. Something about the scores of decorating blogs out there feels bland and homogenous and somewhat mindless. I don’t want to be mindless in the way we live and use the physical space of home. I hope our intentions of making home are always to live well in this space, to create an atmosphere that welcomes people to come and stay a while, and to capture stories of friends and loved ones in the rooms where we live. When our home is cluttered and chaotic, I feel it in my body. When our home is peaceful and inviting, I feel ready to throw open the doors and welcome the neighborhood inside. The old new things are another small element of making home.