Start with Sabbath.

On January 1, per our annual family New Year’s tradition, we drove north to stay at a hotel by the beach for a night.

We’re on our fifth year of these mini family getaways. We used to stay at the Blue Lantern Inn, a cute bed & breakfast that looks out onto Baby Beach in Dana Point. One of the key selling points is that they  coffee to your room in the morning, but with three kids now, we’ve since outgrown it. Now we stay at a hotel in Huntington Beach that is both pet-friendly and kid-friendly. The room we book has a huge bathtub and a pull-out bed that all the kids, in theory, can sleep on, and the hotel offers a triple threat of treats –  wine hour, complimentary cold brew, and unlimited s’mores.

The intention in past years was to use this time to dream and pray over goals as a family, but that’s hard to do with three kids five and under. Now, Dave and I pre-game the dreaming and goal-planning with our own retreat sometime in the fall, and use the annual new year’s getaway to rest and play.

This year, after check-in, we went to happy hour on the pier. There were hundreds of people out, taking pictures and selfies, trying to capture the unreal sunset that night – all the shades of orange, purple, and blue – the first sunset of the new decade. We went back to the hotel for wine and s’mores and sitting around the firepit. The boys watched Home Alone on the pull-out bed. I brought a special bath bomb for their bath, and with the blessing of blackout curtains, my husband and boys slept in until past 9 a.m. I used the quiet time for something as life-giving for me as sleep: journaling, goal-setting, Bible-reading, and prayer. And when the baby woke up, the two of us headed downstairs to pick up hot chocolate so thick it was almost ganache, with homemade caramel and chocolate chip marshmallows, and nitro cold brew with cream. Breakfast was longanisa sausage and pancakes with butter-crisped edges topped with berries and vanilla butter and macadamia nuts. Then more beach time, us sprawled out on hotel towels, me with a book and the boys with sand toys, all blue skies and soft, sea breeze and grounding sand.

Now that we’re home, our boys say, out of the blue, “Remember the hotel? That was fun.” They say, “Remember the hot chocolate?” or “Remembering when we watched the movie and ate french fries?”

They remember. We remember. We remember what it feels like to celebrate and sleep in and savor all of our favorite foods. We remember how to be present and intentional and unrushed, how fun it is to be a family. We remember how to exercise contentment for where we are at this exact moment in this new year.

Our new year’s retreat was not officially Sabbath, but it captured the ethos of it: “a day to pamper your soul in God’s presence.” (John Mark Comer – Sabbath).

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I set 8 goals this year, and the first one is this: to practice Sabbath, every week for all 52 weeks of this year. 

For the last few weeks, we’ve been calibrating and experimenting with what it looks like for our family to set apart a day that is restful and worshipful, a day that shows gratitude for the week behind and celebration for the week ahead.

The questions that we keep coming back to are: What’s life-giving? What does self-care and soul-care look like in this season? What actually feels restorative? How do we model the rhythms of rest and work to our kids? How do we stay present? How do we follow the lifestyle of Jesus in 2020?

We’re learning new rhythms and building on family traditions. I don’t have all the answers to those questions, but we’re starting with Sabbath.

Counting the Fruit

Even in the valley, there are mountaintop moments.

At the beginning of this year, I started writing in fine-point Sharpie, on a notepad with “Remember” letterpressed in deep blue script, my “wins” from the past month.

I write down every good thing I can think of – who we had over for dinner, what essay was published, where we went as a family, funny things the boys said. These lists are part gratitude, part goal progress, part weapon.

In a time when I was still reeling from broken friendships and lost community; when we were still searching for a new house while renovating, with difficulty, our old one; when I was feeling defeated and discouraged – these lists became ammunition against the lies that I didn’t have enough, that I wasn’t doing enough, that God wasn’t a good God.

The practice of counting the fruit (see: John 15:1-8) – noticing, acknowledging, remembering, paying attention to God’s faithfulness, His provision, the ways that He shows up – saved me from so much further grief. What started as a practice to combat the heaviness of defeat became a rallying cry to keep going on the path of abundance. 

This practice helped me find a way back to joy – not in the distant future, but in the here and now.

Because there are mountain top moments, even in the valley.

The fruit doesn’t have to be shiny or perfect.

Every year, in the fall, we go to Oak Glen as a family. It’s one of my favorite family traditions and one of the first things I wrote down on October’s win list. 

We head to Los Rios Rancho, where we line up for BBQ brisket sandwiches and watch them smoke the meat. We buy caramel apples and apple cider in heavy glass jugs and pie with cinnamon crumb topping. If Coffee Bean’s Winter Dream Tea Latte is “Christmas in a cup,” Oak Glen is the epitome of autumn – leaves and hay everywhere, brisk weather, apple everything.

The boys wanted to pick apples this year, so we pushed our City Select between the lines of cars and over the dirt mounds to the other side of the street where the apple orchards were. I don’t know why, but I’m always wearing the wrong shoes when we go. Hay kept getting stuck in my black leather sandals, so I would stop to shake out my shoes. And every few steps, our two-year old would bend down to examine an apple on the ground and bring it to his mouth, even when we told him those round, hollow marks marring the fruit were holes that the worms had dug.

He couldn’t reach the pretty, shiny fruit without help, so he did the best with where he could reach.

It was a 10k and not a marathon? Still a win. An essay and not a published book? Still a win. You haven’t arrived? Me either. Jess Connolly puts it this way: “The win is in using your gifts. The obedience of using your gifts is the abundance.”

So what if the fruit is not shiny or perfect? You don’t have to throw it away. There is a child out there, probably one of mine, who will pick it up off the ground, notice the worm holes, and bite into it anyway.

We don’t have to wait.

I have nearly a year’s worth of fruit that I’ve counted – from first steps, to finished blog posts, to moments of connection in date nights. I can look back and see my personal storehouse of encouragement. 

Did I execute my work perfectly? No. Did I push through discomfort? Did I get up early on days when I wanted to sleep in? Did I hit publish on things that I was afraid to put out into the world? Did I push through the fear to share part of my heart that connected with one other person? Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Progress over perfect.

Every day, write down your moments of gratitude. And every week, count your fruit. You’ll be surprised what you come up with at the end of every month. God’s faithfulness is interwoven into everything. One day you will look back and see how much you’ve grown. Maybe one day you’ll look back and see that you have an abundance of fruit in overfilled buckets.

We don’t have to wait until the right season to count the fruit. Unlike picking apples, we can do this all year round.

In this spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s practice noticing, naming, and counting the fruit.

Waking Up.

“We are not asleep, beautiful in our isolation.” - April M. Payne

I’ve found myself numbed in recent weeks, sleepwalking through my to-do list and long workdays and the chores that go on and on. But there’s life in pausing to notice, in collecting a handful of words when you can – a quiet rebellion against staying asleep to a higher calling. We are made in the image of the Creator, and creation is our birthright.

These are some words I’ve written and some words I’ve loved.

Five house projects we want to tackle over the next year.

Where do I even begin?!

Life has been so full this season with the move and other good things, and it’s been a challenge for me to divide my time between creative projects, sharing those projects and actually living life.

One of these days, I’ll sit down and pull together a design board from all the inspirational photos I’ve saved. I’ll create actual decorating plans for each of the rooms, and maybe I’ll even learn how to render. Right now, the grand vision I have for the look and feel of our new house – Southern California coastal meets modern Spanish – mostly lives in my head, but I have a deep desire to document this making-of-our-home process, so I’ll start today with the easiest, simplest thing I can think of – an intro to our home and the five big projects we want to tackle.

A peek at our house – I love the arched doorways, the floors, the built-ins.

Our new house is a five-bedroom Spanish bungalow in the sweetest neighborhood with recessed sidewalks and tree-lined streets. We’re in a cul-de-sac, sandwiched between two pocket parks, and the weekend after we moved in, there was a block party. We get morning light from the front of the house and sunset light through the back that makes our kitchen and master bedroom glow at golden hour. We have two sets of French doors – one downstairs, one upstairs for the master balcony – that if it weren’t for the bugs, I would keep open all day long.

We don’t have a dining table or chairs. Our couch is too small, our nightstands got damaged in the move, and I don’t have anywhere to set down my bag when I get home, so it lands on the floor. But we have windows everywhere and so much potential. This is the fun part – this blank slate and open space.

Our little coffee station that brings me so much happiness. Even my cookbooks have a home now!

Another day, I’ll tell the story of our house. Meanwhile, here’s our top five project list:

1. Repaint the entire house white and paint the stair banisters. We painted our last house Benjamin Moore’s Classic Gray, but I’ve realized that I love the fresh, crisp and bright look of an all-white house with pops of black and warm wood accents. Choosing white paint is like traveling down a rabbit hole – there are literally thousands of shades. Currently, I’m considering Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee and Simply White (see Studio McGee’s white paint guide) and Dunn Edward’s White Heat (that Amber Lewis used in the Client What’s the Story Spanish Glory house). I loved how Jenni from I SPY DIY transformed her stair banisters, and we may do the same thing with the Satin Black.

2. Take the downstairs flooring throughout the entire house. The stairs and second floor are currently carpeted, which isn’t the worst thing thing in the world, but I love how easy the downstairs flooring is to clean (and it hides dirt so well!).

3. Repaint the exterior and update the front door (dutch or glass paneled) and exterior lighting. We’re going with a modern Spanish vibe here – a crisp white (leaning towards BM’s White Dove) with deep brown and muted blue-gray accents.

4. Get solar installed to bring down our electric bill.

5. Get a fire pit installed in the backyard for post-dinner party s’mores and an outdoor/dirty kitchen to augment the built-in BBQ.

I love this piano room so much – high ceilings, lots of light. We can’t wait to put our Christmas tree in front of that window.

As a little girl, I dreamed of being an interior designer, so I feel like some big dreams are coming true for me with getting to design and decorate this house. This house marks a new journey for us, and I’m excited to share more in the coming months.

White Space.

We started off July by celebrating our ten-year wedding anniversary and ended it by selling our first home. We had a 15-day escrow which was, in one word – insane.

Our remodeled downstairs powder room in the house we sold.

Before we listed, I spent days frantically packing boxes of clutter. I donated piles of mismatched sports equipment, old toys, handbags from my 20s, and cleared every single book off the shelves in our loft. When I was done, I felt like we were living in a new house, with entire walls completely bare.

I felt like I could breathe again.

White space has purpose — a place for your eye to rest, and maybe your soul, too.

It’s August now, and we’re in our new house (a post for another time). I took a ten-day social media break and took a reduced work schedule for the rest of the month. I’m learning that when I take time to create white space in my surroundings and in my schedule, my eyes and my heart have an easier time focusing on the present. I can better distinguish what I truly need in my life from the things that are no longer serving me. The voices of truth and compassion become louder than the chatter and noise, and I feel deeper gratitude for what I already have.

Our new house is full of blank walls. I could fill them easily with frames and photos and art, but I’m going to keep those boxes packed a little bit longer, so that I can enjoy the white space.

This post was written as part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to read the next post in this series "Rest."