My sister called me in the early evening to check in. We hadn’t talked in a while and I’d been MIA in the sibling chat. I told her my messages there had been being getting flagged and going undelivered for whatever reason. She asked if I’d tried restarting my phone, which I hadn’t. So I tried that and to my delight and surprise it worked. She didn’t want to talk up too much time since I was visiting with Elianna on the couch. But she wanted to tell me she’d gone back and read some of my old blogs.

Pretty soon the two of us were getting emotional and tearful. I had a way of romanticizing, or not even that, but of bringing beauty to the forefront. And she was remembering how I was in a different season back then and how I have kids out of the house and that I’m a grandma now.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts lately about beauty and gifts and what to do with them. I’ve had some conviction along the lines of “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing”. Like certain gifts are to be used to point others to God and not to be talked about.

It’s when that quiet intimacy between you and God becomes enough.