I think if the Bible had been written just for me, Psalm 37:7 would read something like this:
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. In the meantime, read some good stuff.
Honestly, that’s where I am. Waiting, resting and reading. Nothing drives the need for this home more than a ten-day illness that keeps you up coughing most of the night and generally lethargic most of the day. I have never been grateful for illness, but today I am.
I have been reading a lot of good things lately, including this amazing blog post by Laraine Herring that really sums up how I’m feeling of late. This balance thing is really tough.
I also just finished Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty. While many people think is a lesser work of hers (and maybe it is since it’s the first of hers that I’ve read), I thought her characterizations and sense of emotional complexity was amazing. She has the ability to capture a character’s personality in physical description so vivid that I really could picture what was happening. Additionally, her explorations of physical beautiful through these characters is quite fascinating, especially since my favorite character in the book – the most beautiful one to me – was Kiki, the wife whose husband had cheated on her and who weights quite more than we think a “healthy” woman should. While the end of the book left me feeling a little flat – perhaps because it ended with Howard, my least favorite character – I really enjoyed the story and the way that Smith embodied her characters.
I’ve also been devotedly reading Jenna’s Cold Antler Farm blog. This woman’s words make me want my farm more and more. . . . she has such a capacity for description that I find myself sighing with delight at least once a post.
So that’s where I am, pretty much couch-bound, pretty much between everything, and pretty much loving what I’m reading in this period of waiting. It’s a place of peace in the wilderness of the wait. I’m just enjoying studying the shrubs as I wander by them.
What shrubs of reading are you enjoying these days?