Today I started walking the Greenway again.
It’s Fall, baby. 🍂
There was something about the cooler air that made me want to get outside and move my body again. I discovered that I can walk a half a mile without sweating—which feels like a small victory worth celebrating. These knees of mine were still screaming a little, but the walk felt good. Not because I went far. Not because I burned a certain number of calories. It just felt good to move, breathe, and be outside.
And maybe that was the point.
I came home and hung a mirror that has been sitting in its little corner since we moved three years ago.
Three years.
I finally decided the mirror had waited long enough.
I also created my little greenhouse for my houseplants, giving them some extra love and attention. I arranged them, watered them, and turned on the humidifier because apparently my plants have entered their “we require a climate-controlled environment” era.
And I happily obliged.
I drank my 60 ounces of water, too.
All of it sounds so ordinary.
But lately I’ve been thinking about the in-betweenness of life.
The spaces between the big things.
The places where nothing particularly Instagram-worthy is happening, but life is still happening.
There is the work I love. The clients I care for. Transitional Pathways continuing to become something more tangible than the idea it once was.
There is Let’s Circle Back, the podcast work that I am building with my co-host and author friend, E. There is something special about creating with someone who has become a friend along the way—about the conversations that happen before the recording, after the recording, and sometimes nowhere near a microphone at all.
There are ideas we’re still shaping.
Conversations we’re still having.
Things we’re still becoming.
And then there is everything else.
The walk.
The water.
The plants.
The humidifier humming quietly in the background.
The mirror finally hanging on the wall.
The quiet.
The solitude.
The ordinary rhythms of taking care of myself.
I have been working so hard to work smarter, not harder.
Trying to figure out how to organize my life, my work, my dreams, my responsibilities. Trying to build Transitional Pathways, show up well for my clients, create, write, prepare, podcast, pray, grow—and somehow do all of it without running myself into the ground.
Yet somehow, it still feels like everything is hard.
And today I had one of those quiet realizations that makes me smile.
Maybe I don’t always need another strategy.
Maybe sometimes I need the basics.
Take care of myself.
Love the work I have been called to do.
Drink the water.
Take the walk.
Hang the mirror.
Tend to the plants.
Cultivate solitude.
Make room for God.
There is something divinely funny about how God works.
I can spend so much energy trying to figure out how to accomplish the God stuff—the purpose, the calling, the next thing, the bigger thing—and then I find myself accomplishing more simply by caring for the woman who is living this life.
Maybe the work isn’t always in the doing.
Maybe sometimes the work is in becoming well enough to receive what comes next.
Today, I didn’t feel particularly productive.
I just felt cared for.
And maybe that is its own kind of productivity.
My soul feels nurtured today.
Cared for.
Hopeful.
There is a softness that comes when you realize you don’t have to force every good thing into existence.
Some things grow because you tend to them.
Some things change because you finally make room.
Some things become visible because you finally hang the mirror.
And some things—perhaps the most important things—God has been tending to all along.
So these are my Sunday finds:
A half-mile walk.
A mirror finally on the wall.
Plants getting extra love and a little humidity.
Sixty ounces of water.
The joy of creating something meaningful with a friend.
Conversations becoming podcasts.
Ideas becoming things.
A little more solitude.
A little less striving.
And a soul that feels good.
Maybe this is what I’ve been looking for in all my attempts to work smarter.
Not a better way to do more.
A better way to be while I’m doing it.
I think I’ll call that a pretty good Sunday.
Staying present,
Michelle💕
©️Intimately Worded, Michelle.
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