A kind and sweet older lady asked me what I was going to do to refresh my soul now that my school was out. I normally have no problems talking to her, but tonight I just stared, like she’d asked me a question I didn’t know the answer to but should have. Laughing in her face would’ve been just plain rude, as would’ve answering with some passive aggressive comment about all the busy things.

“I haven’t thought that far”, I said, when I finally found some words. People don’t normally ask me questions having to do with my soul. What I had been thinking about was how tired I was again, what I needed to be doing to rest and “listen to” my body who’d said “that was too much”. I haven’t really felt well for much of the week. Resting seems the main way of bringing energy back.

This isn’t the first time she’s mentioned it, the doing something for refreshment. I’ve got a note in my Bible that she wrote me several months ago, maybe a whole year ago by now, saying something along the lines of finding something that brings joy and refreshment to my soul. She’d sent me a note, a deep pink flower in a vase, and instructions on how to harvest the seeds to later sow in the wild.