Month: August 2026

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Somewhere in the middle of thankfulness…

There is a sense of collective rejoicing and thankfulness in the neighborhood today during my breezy walk as schools here begin a new instructional year and the remaining months of 2026 venture onward. While the year is over halfway behind us, there is something about this time of transition that creates a pause. Somewhere in the middle of this pause, things get real. For some of us, this middle space comes with gratitude. We can point to moments of joy, growth, answered prayer, or unexpected grace. For others, this middle place comes with disappointment and quieter honesty. Not everything we hoped for has unfolded the way we imagined, thus we find ourselves somewhere in between those two places—holding both gratitude and grief in our hands.

As is a spiritual custom, the first Sunday in January (Epiphany), is STAR Sunday (following the Star of Bethlehem as the Wisemen did). Each year I am gifted a “Star” Word to guide my coming year, a simple word chosen for me to ponder, to notice, to hold in prayer, and return to as a reminder throughout my journey during the year ahead. My word gifted to me this year: thankfulness.

I have been sitting with the word thankfulness for months now, and I will be honest—I am still learning what it means. Being thankful is usually tied to specific moments whereas being grateful (a favorite personal word) represents a stronger, deeper, and lasting state of appreciation. At first, I thought thankfulness might point outward, but more and more, it feels like something growing inwardly, something similar to gratefulness. For example, I remain thankful for a medical team who acted swiftly during a medical procedure in March to save my life. I continue to be thankful for the act of physical healing while learning to care for my body in a more intentional way. Especially this year and with support from those who keep me grounded, this has meant paying attention to my rhythms of rest, nourishment, and building strength and balance in all areas of daily life. Healing is never instant or linear; it rarely looks the way we might expect it to look. Healing has meant learning to be thankful for the body I have now in this moment while learning to live in this body. Thankfully, I have absorbed that one of the greatest gifts others give to me is to encourage my feisty spirit more than evaluate my physical appearance. My body may not look a certain way, but thankfully it allows me to serve, laugh, hug, love, and live this beautiful life each day.

At times, this word thankfulness has felt clearly visible; at other times extremely confusing. Thankfulness tried to slip into the background of daily life but I intentionally keep it front and center. The truth is, thankfulness reminds me how there are stories being written in each of us all the time. There is still forgiveness to be offered, courage to be found, healing to unfold, JOY to surface, and grace to be shared.

Thankfully, no season lasts forever. We are not given the abundance of a full map for the journey but just enough for each step of each day. I may not be full of fresh intention and possibility but I am not at the end to look back and make sense of the whole story. I am living in the middle of my thankfulness, between the what was and what might be with just enough living to trust, to stay in motion, and to become—living in this glorious middle space where things are not fully resolved, but where faith, hope, and Love prevail while the soul celebrates in thankfulness.

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For the love of errands…

Errands, putterings, noodlings, piddlings, wreck-and-ordering…those little voyages we take to hunt and gather things and get stuff done are an integral part of our lives. While the errands are excursions with a purpose, in contrast, chores are those domestic obligations usually performed at home. In Old English, an “aerend” means message or mission with a duty. Running errands is often a mission of duty and yet satisfying in a way other actions in our lives may not be most days. We wander out into the world with a route or list to follow: stop here to drop off the dry cleaning; pick up the prescriptions; don’t forget to purchase those needed supper items at the grocery store… When we complete the route, the results are clear and usually achievable with a tangible and most satisfying conclusion.

To emphasize this point, I recently stumbled upon the social-media show “Errands” (from filmmaker Noah Blau) where someone is accompanied on their mission. Why is it a show so apparently ordinary has become incredibly popular? According to the creator: “Beauty is found in the minutiae, and the things that are banal are often the most interesting. It’s those in-between moments of life where growth and realization happen.” The genius of “Errands” is how it provides a window into the personalities and preoccupations of its participants. A stranger appears and announces the day’s errand. You are immediately privy to their internal monologues as they carry out the mission through serendipitous conversations and pit stops along the way. Each quick episode is a couple of minutes long and wastes no time in establishing a scene with introductions. We are suddenly passengers taken on a private expedition, instantly thrust into someone’s personal life. Even when someone does not accomplish the errand successfully, the process is fascinating. Each of us can relate; we appreciate a “to do” errand list as well as the satisfaction of checking-off each accomplishment.

When visiting others away from home, it is an interesting study to observe the highlights of their daily lives, especially while running errands with them. From what they listen to in the car and how they organize their route to what their chosen stops represent and who they encounter, these errand-running experiences reveal tidbits into daily lives. My paternal grandmother would occasionally enlist a friend to join in and run errands with her. This allowed them time to catch up and visit in person when their daily lives were often too difficult to schedule formal social time. As they both aged, running errands together also allowed them companionship and additional safety during the process (especially when one drove better than the other). On the other hand, I have a friend who strictly completes her errands in solitude because they are the rare break from “people duties.” She swears by “the soft-touch socialization I’m forced into while out and about…you know…the familiar clerk at the pharmacy, the neighbor in the produce section, or the former student in the line at the post office…each errand is its own little episode.”

Yes, errands get us out of our personal spaces away from our chores and into community with others. While it is tempting to hibernate or rely on delivery services, running errands captures that clever combination of the mundane with the meaningful and the magic of mingling tasks while collecting little epiphanies along the errand journey. For the love of errands, here’s hoping your next errands bring their own unique episodes and epiphanies.