Most days, I am a mama in sweatpants and a t-shirt who is homeschooling and running kids around, chatting with friends, making dinner, or getting over run by laundry. I absolutely love my life. I love this season, I love the people I share my days with, my children and all the ways I see them growing and learning and soaking in the time and heart we've invested into them. I love the quirky and silly things they say, the way we snuggle and dance and figure our this whole being humans thing together.
And then I get to come to this little blog and be with all of you. To and have the opportunity to write and podcast and travel and speak and tell stories, and hear stories too makes my heart beat wildly, to find beauty and share it; and to come alive seeing women find rest and hope as we gather it up together feels like a dream. I remember praying that someday, God would use me to encourage with my words and my writing, and at the time, it was a prayer that felt whimsical. It felt like a poem, or a whisper, and it left my lips and drifted to the clouds, weaving and finding its way among the pines above my deck in the mountains. I remember the release in telling God my dream, how free I felt to give it to Him, and then I went back to my everyday, the kind of everyday that I am so fond of, and that was that.
But we have a God who hears our whispers, who knows them long before we do, who holds them tenderly for us and cultivates them by grace. He plants them, waters them, and brings them to bright bloom. Those desires and whimsical wish prayers are usually planted in our hearts by Him to begin with. I got the bug to write in the 4th grade when Mrs. Goveia, my favorite teacher ever, asked me to enter a young writer's competition. I did because I loved her. . . . . and then I won. She called something forth in me, noticed me, challenged me and spurred me on. My parents made room in my days for stories to unfold on reams and reams of paper my dad brought home from his office. They let me lounge and read. They taught me how much words matter. A gift was planted and a gift was called out. Along side the most supportive friends and an agent that has come to be family, somehow, today, my long held dreams and my whimsical prayers are meeting in my very real, sweatpants wearing life. I am so thrilled to announce that I am going to be publishing my very first book with Zondervan!!!
Finding Selah is going to be all about finding rest in unexpected places and learning how to live in rhythm with the Song of God. I'm still living that story in the heart of Manhattan. I'm learning how to live in the tensions of motherhood and everything that pushes and pulls me, I'm learning how to let my dreams come true and how to feel like quite an adult signing contracts while I wear my favorite "Stay Wild" sweatshirt and correct my son's cursive penmanship practice {The photo above is documentation of just that very moment!}
I'll be writing a lot about living in the "in between" here, about finding rest and foraging for beauty as I write, and as God continues to write the story behind this book in my own life. I'm so thankful to be able to share with you and to journey with you.
With great hope and great excitement,
Kristen