Beloved: 

         Finally!  Since the end of February I’ve been excited gather eggs from my own chicken coop.  Saturday I found these three. Sunday there was one.  Monday there were two and I haven’t checked yet today.  Mine are daytime layers so I collect in the evening.  The eggs are tiny but cook up fluffier than grocery store eggs. We crush the shells and feed them back to the hens along with all of our compost and leftovers nobody wants.  I’ve never had a 0% food waste kitchen and I love it!   When all my girls are laying, we should have 6-9 eggs per day so eventually I’ll have extra to sell and share.  

     I do have a hitch in my egg gathering plan; along with the pastoral visiting, sermon studying, housekeeping, supper making elements of that same plan.  I fell down the two steps into my garage yesterday and can’t walk today.  I can hop and hobble but walking is out of the question.  Ben carried me into the house and is doctoring me.  Emily is doing my chores.  They took me and my big, fat, bruisy foot to the doctor today.  Since then I’ve sat in the chair with it wrapped and propped. I can think of 20 things an hour that need doing.  Instead I finished one book and am about to finish another.  I’ve thrown Rosie’s tennis ball for at least fifty times. I fell asleep twice.  I have liked watching the light change as the sun crosses over the house.  Every couple of hours the cat moves a few inches further south on the couch to stay in the sunny spot.  I’m accomplishing very little, but happily.  

     I wish I hadn’t fallen and I’m tempted to get sad my foot might not be better Monday when I leave for vacation, but Monday’s a long time away..  Besides, Emily just brought me a mango popsicle and told me a joke.  Both were extra sweet.    

     You are all so dear to me so please watch your step.  ~ peace  & prayers, pastor annette

Beloved: 

     First a bit of news:  many of you know and love Glenn Miller.  Glenn and his wife Margie, who passed away last year, are a long time UBC members.  Glenn is in IU Health Bloomington Hospital where he’s having more tests as It appears he has metastatic cancer, the origin of which isn’t yet known.  I plan to visit him this afternoon and should have more information after.  He wants it known that his spirits are great and he isn’t worried! 

    Wow is it hot and muggy today!  Maybe not more so than yesterday but today I feel it so oppressively, probably because I woke up with the kind of headache that makes the world seem a hateful place.  No chair is comfortable and every sound is too loud.  Nothing tastes good and I just want to feel better!  I know it will pass and try to be patient and still.  Finally  Excedrin keeps its promise and I start moving around, folding a basket of laundry, tidying the bedroom.    I make it to the office and start the day two hours late . . . . still grumpy but a little steadier.

     Funny how naive healthy people are to the power our bodies over our lives.  How for granted I take it until it defies me in some way ~ using a low class migraine to thwart the best laid plans, being today’s example.  Pretending I can do the day anyway only makes me dizzy and nauseous, forces me to lay down to wait and consider my own culpability.  I could eat better, drink more water, exercise more regularly.   I could think and speak more kindly of it, be less critical and more grateful for parts that work, however imperfect they look to me.   I could treat it like a friend instead of a vintage power tool.  I could remember that what I do for my body I do for my life.

     My headache is gone, thank God, and the day is looking up.  I’m grateful for my healthy body, my patient husband, a flexible work schedule and for whoever invented Excedrin Migraine Relief.  I pray you and your body get along kindly today.  ~ peace and prayers, pastor annette

Beloved:

One week a year I live alone while the Carl and the kids are on a mission trip with Appalachian Service Project.  This year he and the girls are in Harlan, Kentucky repairing houses.  They sleep on the floor of a community center with one spot of wifi access and cold showers rigged out of trash bags and garden hose in the parking lot.  Ben is working at Camp Palawopec out in Brown County, also happily without hot water, wifi or air conditioning.  I visited him last week and found him bug bitten, sunburned, smelly and joyful.

     Every year I’m amazed how small the grocery bill is, how few dishes and laundry accumulate.  Last night I ate two yellow squash, half a cantaloupe, a giant tomato and called it supper.  That would never fly if the others were home.  The evening between supper and bedtime  goes on forever.  It’s not so much lonely as ever so quiet.  The house seems to breathe their absence, not quite relaxed into the promise of their return. 

     Of course it’s not the house - it’s me. How tempting to contemplate their absence rather than receive the gifts of this solitude . . . to spend time wondering what they are doing, if they are well - rather than tend to the unfinished business in my own heart, mind and spirit.  All this time . . . . hours and hours in which no one needs a ride, no one needs me to find something, do something, wash something, decide something.  Time in which to marvel about all the time I have ~ or time with which to do the things I say I long to do - rest, read, sit, listen, pray, exercise.   Just one week - but a whole week nonetheless, to mother myself and let myself be mothered.    Not a bad way to spend the time, not at all.  I’m grateful for it.  I pray this note finds you joyful and hopeful in whatever circumstance today brings.   peace & prayers, pastor annette