Meet Butter, Licorice, and Tulip.

Just call me a sucker. We went to Gecko Hardware, a new local hardware store/gift shop, on Monday to get a few things, and we left with three baby chicks.  Yes, we already have 6 grown chickens in the backyard as pets, and although we've truly loved having them I felt that was more than enough.  Technically, they're living with us temporarily until our new Urban Acres store is complete.

When we saw that baby chicks for sale at the hardware store, Steven looked at me longingly, and I shook my head with a solid "No."  But then...but then...a fuzzy black one jumped into my hand and didn't want to leave.

The chick area in the store was surrounded by a group of friendly older ladies who told us they'd grown up on farms.  They reminisced about sleeping with their chicks at night and the wonderful memories they had of raising the chickens from babies.

Aww, man.

And of course Luci Belle loved them.

And they were being so precious, faintly cheeping and hopping back and forth under the heat lamps. (Did you know they cheep with their mouths closed??)

And chickens are a lot easier to take care of than dogs, in my opinion.

So I said yes to the fuzzy black chick in my hand.  But the hardware store employee insisted, "If you're going to get one, you really need to get one or two more so they can cuddle with each other."

At this point, what's two more?  So we let two more chicks choose us and took them home.

The cuddling began right away... 

Meet our babies... 

Here's Butter.  Butter is a Crested, so she has a little hat.  There's also a sliiiight chance she could be a boy.  Let's hope not.

Here's Licorice.  Licorice is a Black Cochin, and she's going to look super awesome when she grows up.

And here's Tulip, a Leghorn, which basically means she'll be your basic white chicken.  Like Foghorn Leghorn.  But a girl.

Apparently, Tulip is Luci Belle's favorite...

I think these three are going to have to stay at the Bailey home permanently.  How could we resist?

Music Review: Rain For Roots: Big Stories For Little Ones

My latest post is up on Club JellyTelly - a wonderful website with positive programming for kids.  They have a subscription-based service (kind of like Netflix but only $5/month) for unlimited viewing of all their shows. 

These days, the moment I hop into the car and get my almost-three-year-old daughter buckled in, we start playing our current favorite kids’ CD, Big Stories for Little Ones by Rain For Roots, an enchanting collaboration of four Nashville songwriters, young mothers, and friends...

Continue reading here.  Enjoy!

Freedom afternoon.

On Wednesday, I had two hours of freedom that soaked in so deeply, they might as well have been ten.  My hair was windblown, my nose sun-kissed, my soul rejuvenated and restored. 

Late afternoon every Wednesday, our daughter goes to play with our friends who speak to her only in Spanish.  During that time, I usually go to a yoga class, but this week my shoulder was really bothering me.  It was a breezy, warm, gorgeous spring day so instead, I decided to dust of my cruiser bike and take her for a whirl.

It always strikes me how long it takes me to adjust to being alone, to having "freedom" time now that I'm a mother.  I'm with our daughter so much that it's become the norm to rarely ever be alone.  But the more I do it, the easier it becomes to jump out of my mother skin for a little while and remind myself of who I am outside of being a mother - I'm Christine, lover of outdoors and bike rides and journaling and reading and quietness.

After dropping her off, I rode my bike to the nearby meadow, the perfect place to have a few minutes to myself.

Not another soul was there.  

I walked my bike over to the park bench under the shade trees and unloaded books and journals from my bike basket.  I bit into a green apple I'd brought along as a snack.  And I sat.  And listened. 

I read some lines in an old journal and added to my list of "1000 Gifts."

But mostly I just stopped for awhile and took time to connect with myself again. 

~ ~ ~

Soon afterwards, my husband was done with work so I rode back to our house and traded in my bike for his scooter.  With our helmets and sunglasses on, I held on loosely to his waist and we scooted a mile down the street to the Bishop Arts District for a mini-date to enjoy fresh, crunchy salads at Eno's.  The only seats available outside were two adirondack chairs by the street.  Perfect.  As we munched on such a fresh, healthy meal, I realized my bangs were caked to my face and I smelled like sweat, but I couldn't stop smiling.

All of this happened in just two hours total.  But it made all the difference in the world to reconnect with myself and the things I love. 

Yes, I'm a wife.  Yes, I'm a mother.  But mostly, I'm Christine.  And I can never lose that.

Bread & Wine: a review and a dinner party.

As I mentioned before, Shauna Niequist's people were kind enough to include me in the group of bloggers reading and reviewing advance copies of her latest book, Bread & Wine: a love letter to life around the table.  Last month, I decided to invite a bunch of friends over for a dinner party to taste several recipes from the book. 

I needed a little distance from the evening to do an honest recap.  I didn't want to write something happy-go-lucky; I wanted to write something honest.

So, here's how it went...

~ ~ ~

The day of my Bread & Wine dinner party, I was feeling uncomfortable in my own skin. It was just one of those days we women have sometimes - my face felt puffy, my jeans were extremely tight, and I just felt like I was taking up too much space in the world.  It's the worst way to feel, you know, when you're about to have people over for a feast.  I could feel my excitement about having close friends over for a special night being stolen away quickly.

The truth is, I've been having a hard time lately - emotionally haywire, physically "off."  While I'm working with a holistic doctor to even out these imbalances, underneath I'm struggling with the same old body image stuff that's plagued me my entire life.  Even as I type this, I know it sounds shallow and trivial, but in the moment, it feels real and crippling.

So all afternoon that day, I asked the Lord to help me let go of my self-absorbancy.  I wrestled internally, speaking truth to myself:

You are not defined by how you look.

Don't let your insecurities ruin this special night.

Embrace what's real - these friendships around the table.

No one cares about the size of your muffin top.  Seriously.

And that leads into why I love this book.  Bread & Wine is about food and delicious, easy-to-share recipes. But it's about so much more.  Bread & Wine is about balance. It's about appreciating food for its sustenance, yet not being afraid to admit that you enjoy eating, that you're hungry, that life is too short to never eat bread again for fear of gaining a few pounds.  It's about finding the balance between "feasting and fasting" (one of my favorite chapters), knowing when it's okay to indulge a little and when it's time to step back and restrain.

In the chapter "swimsuit, ready or not," Shauna says something that really resonates:

Shame wants us to be deeply apologetic for just daring to exist.  I want to dare to exist and, more than that, to live audaciously, in all my imperfect, lumpy, scarred glory, because the alternative is letting shame win...

I'm not going to let a lifetime of shame about my body get in the way of living in a rich, wild, grateful, wide-open way.

I cannot tell you how much these excerpts helped me, as I chopped ingredients for Green Well Salad and methodically stuffed dates with goat cheese.

I thought about how vulnerable we all are.  We are invited to share a meal with someone.  We choose our clothes, maybe some makeup and jewelry.  We make the choice to put ourselves out there.  As we offer ourselves and our hunger and sit at another person's table asking to be fed, we are at that person's mercy.

 

So as I was chopping and prepping, I had a realization: what an honor and privilege I have tonight.   Every time someone gathers around my table, I get to offer my own vulnerability and meet them in theirs.

What people are craving isn’t perfection.  People aren’t longing to be impressed; they’re longing to feel like they’re home.  If you create a space full of love and character and creativity and soul, they’ll take off their shoes and curl up with gratitude and rest, no matter how small, no matter how undone, no matter how odd.

If there's anything I want my home to communicate, it's that.  Because Christ gives me that freedom, and I want others to have it too.

So, I stopped trying to "feel myself" and instead focused not on my weaknesses but what I have to offer:

I can be vulnerable. 
And I can feed people.

So I put the prepped dates in the fridge and moved on to setting the table for my guests.

~ ~ ~

Our farm table was set simply - white butcher paper sprawled down the center, juice glasses filled with crayons scattered about (because no day at our house is complete without coloring of some sort), and a few candles.  The placecards were made with memorable quotes from the book mounted on corks.

Here are the recipes from the book that we chose to re-create:

• Bacon-Wrapped Dates
• Green Well Salad
• Mar-A-Lago Turkey Burgers
• Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Toffee

And of course, bread and wine...

The Bacon-Wrapped Dates were divine. With only three ingredients, these are a great appetizer I'm sure I'll make again and again.  People were lingering around the plate, which is always a good thing.

Bacon-Wrapped Dates

The Green Well Salad was crunchy, creamy, and sweet.  Since then, my daughter has fallen in love with red grapes and wants them at practically every meal.  Score.

Green Well Salad // Mar-A-Lago Turkey Burgers

And the Mar-A-Lago Turkey Burgers?  I'm gonna go ahead and use the "M" word: they were MOIST.  Yes, moist.  And that's hard to say about a turkey burger, which is usually slightly dry and lackluster, right?  The best part about the burgers was the "Special Sauce" made from ketchup, mayonnaise, and mango chutney.  The Special Sauce was the star of the dinner.  As in, {slightly panicked} "Where's the Special Sauce?  I need more... "  And, "What is IN this Special Sauce?!"  And, "I could drink an entire VAT of Special Sauce."

Finally, for dessert - Dark Chocolate Sea Salted Toffee.  To me, toffee has always seemed like something one purchases, not something one makes at home.  But this book encouraged me to give it a try, and I had no idea how simple it is!   In all fairness, my husband did have to rescue me about halfway through stirring the toffee because I started to freak out that it was turning into a lumpy mess.  He beat it into submission while I hovered over his shoulder, and all was well.   Just a few bites of this decadent toffee crumbled on top of Jeni's Ice Cream = perfect.

A few variations to the toffee recipe: Melt the butter first, then add the sugar and bring it to a boil.  I dumped the butter and sugar in together and I think that was part of my problem.  Also, I used Pink Himalayan sea salt on top, so there were some small flecks of salt and then some larger pieces.  So good.

Overall, the recipes were easy to make and delicious.  And thanks to Shauna's humorous and helpful blurbs before each recipe, you get tips on how to cook it, serve it, and make it part of your repertoire.

The back of the book also has some handy entertaining tips, such as:

"I think it's totally OK to have the food undone [when the guests arrive], as long as there's music and candles, and the host is ready.  It's not OK to come to the door in a towel, even if the food is ready."

Not that I've done that before or anything. Ahem.

~ ~ ~

Here are the precious friends who gathered around the table...

The night was special, but it was also normal, if that makes sense.  Sharing meals around the table has become so much the rhythm of our home, and for that I am thankful.

So, I would consider our Bread & Wine dinner party a success.  We laughed and enjoyed delicious food.  All the recipes turned out wonderfully.  We had full bellies and full hearts.  And I had a victory that evening in the ongoing war with my body image, because I decided to live wide-open and vulnerable. 

When the night ended, I realized that "feeling myself" has less to do with how my clothes fit and more to do with surrounding myself with people I love.  The absolute worst thing I can do is be "too scared to open the door."  The best thing I can do is gather with them.  Again and again.

* If you haven't yet read Bread & Wine, you can purchase it here on Amazon. 

* This post includes Amazon affiliate links.

This moment.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama

Bye bye, Brennan.

"Whenever the gospel is invoked to diminish the dignity of any of God's children, then it is time to get rid of the so-called gospel in order that we may experience the gospel."
~ Brennan Manning, Abba's Child

Brennan Manning, a hero of the faith and one of my favorite authors of all time, just passed away at age 78.  When I think of Brennan Manning, I absolutely think of the word "grace."  His written and spoken words have communicated the blood-and-guts meaning of grace to me in a unique, impactful way.

I love these words from Brennan's obituary...

"Brennan Manning, for whom grace was irresistible, completed his earthly journey on Friday, April 12 at 12:10AM. He is now resting safely in the arms of his Abba."

Image source: etsy.com/shop/thelovelywords

My freshman year of college at Belmont, I read Brennan's most well-known book, The Ragamuffin Gospel.  Admittedly, I only picked it up because DC Talk endorsed it, and Brennan Manning was in their Jesus Freak video.  But it was the first "Christian living" book I'd ever read, and it changed me. 

You see, at the ripe age of 17, I was a "good Baptist girl" who had never really experienced much hardship.   I honestly saw myself as a pretty good person...which was all well and good, except that it had nothing to do with grace.  When I read about the fact that I, too, was a ragamuffin in need of grace, I was deeply affected.  I wish it had shattered me then, but it would be years later before I fell on my face in honest need of God's grace with broken pride, truly for the first time. 

When I first met my now-husband, Steven, he shared about how grace had changed his life.  He emailed me a scanned copy of the "The Imposter" chapter from Brennan's book, Abba's Child.  I read it curled up in my bed in Nashville one night, and it was like nothing I'd ever heard - there is a poser, an "imposter" inside each of us?   It began to reposition my skewed view of reality - yes, there are even believers wrestling everyday with the tension of sin and grace and forgiveness.  Looking back, I'm ashamed of how I treated people, seeing myself as "better" than those who openly struggled.  I was the worst of the imposters.

Almost four years ago, I finally read all of Abba's Child for myself and wrote this in reflection, "People have been telling me to read that book for a decade.   I am just now discovering its beauty and relevance in my life as I realize that of my almost 30 years as a believer in Christ, I still do not really know what it feels like to know I am God's beloved."

I could fill an entire journal with one-liners by Brennan that have cut to my very soul.

"When the craving for reassurances is stifled, trust happens."
~ The Ragamuffin Gospel

~ ~ ~

"When a man or woman is truly honest (not just working at it), it is virtually impossible to insult them personally.  There is nothing there to insult."
~ The Ragamuffin Gospel

~ ~ ~

"There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are."
~ The Ragamuffin Gospel

~ ~ ~

"The poor in spirit are the most nonjudgmental of peoples; they get along well with sinners."

~ The Ragamuffin Gospel

~ ~ ~

"Without fear, I can acknowlege that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life."
~ Abba's Child

~ ~ ~

"The number of people who have fled the church because it is too patient or compassionate is negligible; the number who have fled because they find it too unforgiving is tragic."
~ Abba's Child

The one book of Brennan's that I haven't read is his last one, a memoir called All Is Grace.  This must go to the top of the reading list. 

Bye bye for now, Brennan.  I have no doubt you are now safe in the arms of your Abba.  I am so thankful for the way God has moved through your life, and for the way He's used your life to change mine.

* This post contains Amazon affiliate links.

3 simple joys.

I found this quote on my dear friend Jenni's blog this morning, and how it resonated with me:

We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
—Roger Ebert

On the days when I feel the least like I want to contribute joy, those are the ones when I absolutely must.

So here are some joys I want to share today...

A new book to inspire a tired mama who has run out of ideas...

Check out the blog The Artful Parent as well - great stuff!

~ ~ ~

Finding my daughter this way in the back yard...

~ ~ ~

An Easter egg hunt everyday...

It's one of the joys of keeping chickens, for sure!

~ ~ ~

What are some simple joys you've experienced lately?

Let's dance.

My latest post is up on Club JellyTelly - a wonderful website with positive programming for kids.  They have a subscription-based service (kind of like Netflix but only $5/month) for unlimited viewing of all their shows. 

I have a challenge for you.  Try not to crack a smile while dancing the Running Man in your socks on the living room floor.

See?  It’s impossible.

Here's the post if you'd like to check it out - Let's Dance. Enjoy!

Spring discoveries.

We've been soaking up every minute of spring around here.  This year, I seem to have noticed unique flowers popping up everywhere.  Maybe because toddlers walk at a snail's pace...ha!  Well I'm thankful for the slowness that helps me to stop and notice just how detailed God is in creation.

"Every spring is the only spring - a perpetual astonishment."
~ Ellis Peters

This moment.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual.

A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week.

A simple, special, extraordinary moment.

A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Inspired by SouleMama