Revealing Grace

I've started baking again. On the surface that statement seems meaningless, but to me it holds weight and resolve. It is symbolic of restoration. Who knew a pie could be so existential?  I've always loved baking, since I was young. When I moved to Arizona I started really cooking too- homemade sauces and meals- and I learned to love that as well. But baking has always bought me joy. After my husband left I stopped baking. I didn't see the point. I didn't have anyone to bake for and I had lost a lot of my joy. The effort seemed pointless. I could barely lift myself out of bed, why would I bake a pie? I can remember the first time I made a meal in that year of sadness. It seemed like a great feat, an accomplishment, a marker of my resolve to not just exist but live. I remember it being difficult. Not in a physical way, but as if I was climbing some wall in my mind and the task exhausted me. Making a pot of chili was equal to running a marathon. Yet, I could not

Moving to a new city is tough, ya'll. I feel like I should be a pro at it by now, on the third go-round, but I still have days where I can't quite figure out how to conquer the challenges of a new place with gumption and bravado. Even the roads in a new city can be stressful. The roads in Dallas are crazy and trying to juggle directions, the pup, and the seemingly endless construction can be enough to make me a hermit. Moving to a new city can be lonely.  My first foray into a new city (Pasadena, California) took a lot of adjustment, but I was in graduate school so the ways to make friends were built in. I was in classes and an apartment where there were people my age, similar interests, and others looking to make friends in a new city. When you are 29 and working its much harder to meet new people. I suppose every person in the store or at my apartment complex could be a potential friend, but I end up just making awkward eye contact or mumbling to my dog. Sometimes I

I was just standing on my back porch, looking out at the trees, at the sweet family teaching their daughter how to swim. "I can do this on my own." I thought as I surveyed the world around me. "I'm ok on my own, for now. I'm happy. I'm happy with my life, with where I am. I am good doing life on my own for a bit."  It was a bit of a declaration to my sometimes lonely heart. Perhaps I believed it, perhaps I was trying to convince myself. Perhaps I honestly don't know what it is that I want at this moment in time. Whatever the truth of the statement was, I left it sitting in the humid Texas air as I walked back inside to take the dog out. When I opened my door, distracted by the excited pup, I was surprised to find a large box sitting on my doorstep. I picked it up and looked to see who it was from. Immediately tears began to fill my eyes. Two of my high school best friends, who I have not seen in eleven years, had sent me a care package. 

This morning I stood on my porch laughing like a mad woman. Why? Because it was raining.  I know, I know, for all of you people who live in places with monsoon season or places where the rain never quits, I sound crazy. But in Texas, at least so far, it hasn't rained much. And I love rain. Like I really, really love rain. It struck me as so amazing that it decided to rain this morning because just last night I had been talking to a friend who is on vacation in Colorado, lamenting that they were sitting in a mountain house listening to the rain, while I was sitting in an apartment listening to my skin crackle and die in the overwhelming heat. I began to question, as we often do when we are left alone for too long, why I had made the decision to move here. "Why didn't I move to Colorado?" I thought,  "Why did I come to Texas where I have no friends except the mosquitos that think I'm the greatest snack ever invented?" Just because it hadn'