With our most generous tax return, we are installing hardwood floors on our first floor, buying furniture, and finally hanging up some pseudo-art on the bare walls. Finances and laziness have prevented us these past ten months from really settling in. I feel like we are on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition the house is looking so damn good.
Lately, the idea of "intentionality" has been on my mind. My old church in Minneapolis was very intentional about the pursuit of community, worship, and ritual. My new life is very unintentional about all those things. I have no church, very little worship (does singing Christian music at the top of your lungs in your minivan count?), and only a little bit of community. Yet, I feel this deep, unsatiated hunger in my belly to be more intentional about my life in every area. I used to sit back and hope that connections, meaningful life moments, and spiritual "greatness" would just happen to me, and when it didn't, I would take it personally and feel rejected or confused why Sally Jones Smith had it all and I didn't. Now, I realize, more than ever, that I will receive from community and my spiritual life what I am willing to put into it, or more importantly, how "open" I remain to the process.
I have almost been back in Colorado for a full year. I feel like my memories this past year are still inaccessible and too new to recall. Life is passing by quickly, and yet my heart lags a few seasons behind, in trees and lakes and greenness.
