One Thing...

Who am I? How did I get here?

This outspoken proponent of slow and intentional living is drowning.

I guess a move and home renovation will do that...nobody is immune to the swiftly flowing undercurrent that whisks you off your feet and then pulls you under before you even know what hit you.

We're tired. So tired. We're stressed beyond any stress we've ever known. We're disconnected. We're prickly. We don't have any capacity to hold up under the weight of the everyday challenges our life is fraught with. At the slightest breath of ill wind, we snap in two. We don't know who we are anymore. 

And we don't like it.

Now that life is resuming it's normal(ish) cadence for us, we find ourselves faced with the opportunities to: slow down, savor, say no, breathe, feel, focus, choose what we welcome into our life, be intentional with our time, to LIVE!

Or not.

Simple as that. Slow living may not be easy, but it IS simple. We know we've been running at waaaaaayyyy beyond our capacity this past year. And this is the low it has brought us to. - This past week I've been thinking about how if THIS is what life is gonna look like (feel like, be like): what's the point?? Seriously. 

So there is some major aeration getting ready to commence here at Ingleside. Our souls desperately need some space to breathe. We have a staycation weekend planned to get some healthy boundaries in place, take stock of relationships that are only sucking the life out of us, get realistic timetables and priority lists down for some of the remaining house projects, identify those things that are like poison in our lives, institute rituals of calm back into our days, revisit things that bring us joy and fill our souls- and make intentional space for them.

But today, my one thing was to re-learn how to sit...and savor. Even if it's for 5 minutes at a time.

Case in point: I grabbed a fresh Honeycrisp apple to take on the run as I got back to my nagging to-do list. One bite, however, stopped me in my tracks to reminded me that we are in the glorious throes of apple season, and never again will these underappreciated stalwarts of the fruit world taste quite as heavenly as they do right now fresh from the tree. 

So I sat down. And did nothing but savor every last bit of that chin-drippingly good apple.

Somehow, that small act of making space in my day to savor, also made space in my mind...in my heart... and in my soul. And the nourishment wasn't just physical. It was full and complete.

What is your one thing? What will you choose to savor today?