So...What Do You DO?

Ryan needed some fun to break up all the learning he's been doing at work, so we had some extra fun on the podcast this week - looking back into the craziness of our pasts. We might have figured out why Ryan's bald and we went over one of my ten million teen crushes. Sigh. (Plus many more laughs.)

 Take a listen!

Last Sunday, Ryan and I were chatting with a gentleman we met not long ago at our new church. We're still in the "get to know you" stage, and he asked Ryan what he did for a living. After they chatted the world of physical therapy for a while, he turned to me and I knew the question was about to be redirected my way. And it was. I gave my standard answer of being a stay-at-home wife, writer, and speaker. He nodded and made a comment about the important work of stay-at-home moms.

I just smiled, because I get that misinterpretation frequently. "I'm not a mom," I clarified. "Stay-at-home wife. Our only child is a cat, and there's no corralling her anytime soon." (I left out last week's potty-training debacle.)

I could tell my clarification had rendered him speechless, and I was neither surprised nor offended. People nod in admiration when they think I'm a stay-at-home mom. When they find out I'm a stay-at-home wife, they just nod in confusion.

What do I do all day?  Hallmark and coffee marathons? Well, in December, yes! (KIDDING!) I've learned that when people find out I stay at home, they presume I'm either bored to tears or a manicure-getting, coffee-guzzling socialite. And neither is true. But in their defense, I will say that when I made this transition out of full time work and into full time wife-ing it, I hunted all over the internet for articles and posts on how to make the most of your time as a stay-at-home wife without kids, and I came up pretty empty. Either there aren't many of us out there, or no one else has found the subject worth a blog post!

So in case you're wondering exactly what I do all day if I'm not watching Hallmark and drinking lattes, here's a quick list.

* House and Home Work. When I give my "job title," I intentionally list my role as a wife before writer and speaker, because in my mind, it's the most important. The pieces of my daily job description that serve Ryan are important to me, and they fill part of my every day. Making the bed, doing laundry, cooking meals, cleaning the house, meal planning, making the grocery list, watering plants, emptying the dishwasher, and other such tasks have to be done, and they're done much more regularly and thoroughly now that I have the time to devote to them. Ryan still has a few things he prefers to do (trash duty, mowing the lawn, etc.) but I'm happy to fill in with those too if he's extra busy. When we both worked, these things were done haphazardly and often by our joint effort, late at night or on the weekends, whenever we could cram them in. It's so much nicer to have them done regularly and well.

* Health Pursuits. When I went to visit my buddies at WBCL last week, I got to see Lynne for the first time in over a year. She hadn't seen me since before the clean eating and regular workouts were part of my routine, and she asked what I found that finally worked for me. (She knew losing weight was a constant battle for me in my time at the station.) I told her about the 21 Day Fix and clean eating and all that, but I told Ryan later that in truth, a big part of the change was not being a commuter anymore. I don't spend 2 hours in a car every day. I actually have time to work out 5-6 days a week. (That did not happen when I worked.) I have time to go for walks. I have time to prepare healthy meals. I sleep for more than four hours a night. My health has changed because I've made it part of my job.

* Relationships. Another thing I just did not have time for when I worked full time and commuted? Relationships outside of work or Ryan. We had friendships that suffered permanently, I'm afraid, from our busyness in that season. Staying home means I have time to invest in relationships, through church, coffee dates, Bible studies, email, sending cards and letters, visiting Ryan at work, etc. My ability to prepare for things while Ryan's at work means that he can also enjoy that benefit when he comes home and we can have company or go spend time with others. It's freeing to have friends again!

* Writing. When I worked, I had time to blog every day and that was it. Any other writing I did happened for work alone. I didn't have time to dream up books or write for websites or anything else. Now I have time for that. I've written two full manuscripts since I've been away from a full-time job, I published a third manuscript (which had been mostly written but never tweaked), I'm more intentional about my blog, and I am knocking on doors to write for other places, too. Writing takes time. It takes quiet, uninterrupted time. I never had that before, and now I do. I love it!

* Reading. I never had time to read (other than for work) before I stayed home. Now I read an average of a book a week and I love it. I learn so much through studying the words of others, and it helps me become a better writer.

* Podcasts. It takes an average of three hours to put together an episode of Spill the Beans from start to finish, and probably four hours, minimum, for an episode of The Conversation Cafe. It's important to me to be thorough and as professional as I can be with both of those projects, and I am so grateful for the time to do them!

* Speaking. I learned a lot from Lynne about how to take speaking engagements seriously. I put a lot of time into communicating with the places who hire me, writing and learning my material, and presenting it well. I'll practice every talk an average of five times before I give it, and some even more than that. I work on visual aids and follow-up communication and establishing relationships with the people I meet while I'm out speaking, and all of that takes time. I didn't have the time to do it well when I worked, so I want to give it my all now!

* Me time. I try really hard to do my devotions during the day while Ryan's at work, to spend time in prayer, to relax when my mind is overwhelmed, to run errands and take care of things that would take away from time with Ryan, so that when he comes home from work each night, I can give him the rest of the evening for us to enjoy together. I try to have dinner ready, and then we have time to work out together, watch our TV shows together, go for walks when it's nice, or be part of fun things that we would otherwise have to decline because all our work awaited.

So that's what staying at home looks like for this girl. My days are packed from morning to night, so never fear that I'm bored! Maybe I should just print off copies of this post, and the next time someone asks so........what do you DO all day? I can just let them read all about it! :)

A Shafferland Day in the Life, January 2017

Julia from My Life in Transition does "Day in the Life" posts every quarter, where she records what life is like for one day from start to finish. I love the posts, but always felt our life was probably too boring for such a post. (Although I sorely wish now I would have done one when I worked at the station!)

But record-loving me knows that in ten years, I'll wish I'd done a "boring" post on our 2017 life, so today is my first day to post such an event! None of our days ever look the same (EVER!) but here was what last Saturday looked like in Shafferland. (Sorry in advance for the length.)

Saturday, January 14, 2017
Bekah is 38 years old
Ryan is 37 years old
Braeya (the cat) is 10 years old
Married 4 years (49 months)


6:00 a.m. || The alarm goes off for the first time and is appropriately labeled for how I feel about all alarms. I decide to ignore it. For the next 52 minutes, actually.

6:52 a.m. || Ryan is up and getting ready, and alarm #2 crawls on the bed and begins her version of beeping. There is no snooze button on this one.

6:55 a.m. || I'm up, because alarm #2 wants a drink from the sink. Yes. She has a water bowl that is always full, but she insists her drinks come from the sink. And she can put away some serious H20.

7:01 a.m. || He normally already has it going, but he must have ignored his alarm too, because I find Ryan brewing coffee. My day can't officially begin until that is ready and consumed.

7:02 a.m. || I'm in my purple bathrobe and relegated to the couch to read blogs, check all the social media, and see the latest conflicting set of opinions on the ice storm we may or may not get today or tomorrow or never.

7:22 a.m. || Ryan delivers my cup of coffee to me and proceeds to check the weather which has, in fact, changed significantly in the twenty minute span since I checked it. Eyeroll, Indiana.

7:30 a.m. || Ryan and I cuddle up on the couch for our devotion and prayer time together before he goes to work for a while. We have just started reading LuAnn Fulton's book Image Seeker.

7:45 a.m. || We are two days away from Ryan's gallbladder surgery, and yesterday we learned that in the next little town over, 172 students were absent from the elementary school and 29 more were sent home with stomach crud. So our life from now until post-op consists of vitamins, oils, diffusing, and anything that will keep the crud at bay. I begin the oil regimen for the day.

8:10 a.m. || I am curled up on the couch eating my go-to breakfast these days: plain Greek yogurt sweetened with honey, homemade granola, and blackberries on top. Since it's Saturday, I'm allowing myself all the extra time in the world to read blogs and Facebook links, and currently I'm wandering through a post about a cookie for every state in the USA. No wonder I want breakfast.

8:36 a.m. || I pause the fun to do some work. I recorded a podcast this week with the author of a prayer book, and I need to promote the podcast on social media and email links of my work to her publicist - keeping up my end of the promises for having her as a guest. And of course, I'm OCD, so I have a checklist for all the promotion chores to make sure I don't miss any.

8:58 a.m. || I'm sitting at 300 steps for the day, which is not stellar for being up for two hours. But it's not out of the ordinary for a writer on a Saturday. So I get up and begin the first of many laps around the house. In the summer, I get my steps in outside, but winter knocks out that possibility, so throughout the day, it's lap time!

9:23 a.m. || I now have a more respectable 2000 steps under my bathrobe belt, and would have had them done sooner, had Braeya not needed another long drink and a potty break. {If you missed that post, we are in the throes of toilet training - like actually TOILET training - our cat, so potty breaks actually require monitoring and documentation of their own.} Before moving on to the next activity, I've decided to pause and begin a kitty training post, since so many have asked for updates on this adventure so they can go and do likewise.

10:06 a.m. || I'm getting dangerously sleepy on the couch, so it's time to get up, get showered, and get ready for the day. Since I have no intentions of leaving the house today {although so far = no ice} I decide to just do the skincare regimen and not mess with makeup, but I WILL go to the trouble of drying and straightening my hair so I don't have to do that all over again tomorrow and can instead sleep longer! {My hair is so thick that it takes FOREVER to dry and straighten, so I always make sure I can get two days out of it.} Athletic workout shirt and yoga capris since I'm in for the day. How I do love a Saturday!

11:02 a.m. || Finally conquered the hair, so I'm officially ready for the day. Realized that Rosie {our iLife vacuum} never ran this morning because we keep forgetting to reset her auto-start feature, so I start her and resume the step-gathering for the day. Walking in the house is beyond boring, so I pass the time by texting Ryan to see what time he's coming home for lunch, texting my sister in Kansas to see if their predicted ice storm actually showed up, and surfing Facebook, where I find the most ADORABLE picture of Ryan and his siblings then and now. Man, he was the cutest kid in the universe! Those dimples!!

11:37 a.m. || 5000 steps conquered, which puts me right where I want to be by lunch time. Ryan just texted that he's heading home {carefully, as freezing rain has arrived, according to the Scanner Facebook page}. I've got green beans cooking on the stove, I'm working on my next round of water {since I'm behind - whoopsie!!} and I'll warm up our leftover meat from yesterday so we can throw down a quick lunch before he has to go back to work to treat more patients.

11:47 a.m. || Lunchtime! Leftovers for the win with warmed up coffee from the bottom of this morning's pot to cap it off. While we eat, we talk about his morning, how long he'll have to work in the afternoon, and how horrible of a commute all his co-workers who live far away are about to have when it's time to go home.

12:18 p.m. || The mail arrived while we were eating, so before he goes back to work, he runs out to get it so I don't have to. It's my favorite kind of mail day: I got a package! A new book, which I'll read next week and hopefully be able to arrange an interview with the author soon!

12:23 p.m. || Ryan slides back to work, and I make a date with the couch for some more reading before I get up to do some chores. Coffee and Pinterest sound like a good start to the afternoon.

12:48 p.m. || Phone rings and it's my friend from college/editor of my last book, Amy, who had asked if she could interview me for a project she needs for her degree. Of course! It's perfect timing since Ryan's at work. She settles in with her questions and I realize I could knock out some steps while I answer, so I pace around the house and have the nicest talk with her.

1:54 p.m. || Interview concludes and so does my step goal! SWEET!

2:00 p.m. || Pull out my Bible and brand new journal {one of life's true pleasures - if you're a writer} to have my devotions and pray for a while.

2:27 p.m. || Expecting Ryan home from work anytime now, so I hustle into the kitchen to empty the dishwasher, which ran after breakfast this morning, clean up the general mess I hadn't bothered with after lunch, make a pitcher of iced tea, and refill the diffuser. While I am up, I make my 2:30 snack, which Ryan always teases me about. If the clock turns 2:31 and I've not had my snack, my body starts hollering. It ALWAYS knows 2:30.

2:43 p.m. || Finally sitting down with the 2:30 snack. Today's snack of choice is the Dashing Dish Chocolate Chunk protein shake. My favorite. And the cup makes me smile too. Favor from my niece's wedding last summer. Always drink my shakes from this cup!

3:06 p.m. || Ryan's still not home, proving that "anytime now" is a very broad range. I decide to do the next project on the list, which is to take down all the old Christmas cards hanging inside the kitchen cabinets and replace them with the photo cards we received for Christmas 2016. I like to keep them hanging up all year, out of sight, but where I see them daily, so I can pray for our friends!

3:26 p.m. || Ryan texts that he's headed home and we have our standard code conversation for "Do you want a Coke?" followed by "yes please," without actually having to admit I want a Coke. His timing is perfect. The photo hanging project is done just as he writes.

3:48 p.m. || Ryan is home from work, changed into comfy clothes, and we've hit the couch with the remote, which is when I realize I have never turned on the TV all day! He's not feeling great, but we power through because the gallbladder eviction date is IN SIGHT. Sounds like rest is in order.

4:09 p.m. || He's already asleep on the couch, and that nap I kind of wanted this morning is beckoning again, so I curl up beside him. Clearly there will be no photos of us sleeping unless Braeya has miraculously figured out photography. Come to think of it, I haven't seen her lately. Probably taking an all-afternoon nap of her own.

4:57 p.m. || Found her! Wake up when Braeya walks across my hip while I am sleeping and curls up on Ryan's lap, which is her favorite place to be. Discover I've missed about 8 texts from various people in the last half hour, so I stay up to respond. Figure I should probably get up and start working on dinner, but it's just so cozy all curled up under a blanket with Ryan. Decide to catch up on Facebook and emails before moving.

5:20 p.m. || Crawl off the couch and head to the kitchen to start on dinner. We're still on the all-chicken diet, since it's about all Ryan can eat without feeling sick. I assemble salads {spinach, celery, almonds, cranberries and cheese} and defrost chicken breasts to grill on the stove for the top. Ryan's watching football, and gets up long enough to brew the evening pot of coffee before heading back to the game.

5:48 p.m. || Sit down in the living room to eat our salads and watch football. {In 2016 we made a goal to try to eat more meals at the table and we do, almost all the time. But if we want to watch TV while eating, we'll make an exception and move to the living room.} Someone shows up hoping for scraps.

6:03 p.m. || Ryan is feeling better and decides Marie Callender's Razzleberry pie sounds good. Surprisingly this is one thing he can eat without getting sick, and he can have so few pleasures in the food world right now, that who am I to say no? He bundles up and heads to the store for a pie to get him through the weekend. I wait at home to preheat the oven.

6:30 p.m. || The pie is in the oven, the coffee has brewed, and we decide if we don't work out RIGHT NOW, it's never going to happen. We're working our way through the BeachBody Hammer and Chisel workouts, and tonight is Chisel Balance. I'm terrible at balance, but I want pie, so I'll do my workout! We change into workout clothes, fill up our water bottles, and get busy balancing.

7:13 p.m. || Workout done, and we crash. Ryan goes back to football and I check in with my workout accountability group and begin to edit pictures from a family gathering a week ago. I've been so caught up in all the gallbladder stuff that I forgot I had pictures sitting in the camera!

8:00 p.m. || Ryan brings coffee and pie to me on the couch, and we eat while he flips back and forth between football and Dateline and I write Sunday's blog post. Braeya begs for dessert just like she begs for dinner. No shame for that one.

8:51 p.m. || I pour second cups of coffee for each of us and pull out my new coloring book I got for Christmas. All my to-do list items are officially crossed off for the day, so I am happy to have time to sit down and decompress while I color.

9:21 p.m. || Remember that I never shared Christmas pictures with Ryan's family. Stop to upload copies for each of them so they can use as they wish. Sometimes I feel like Amelia Bedelia. I get so easily sidetracked and have to stop RIGHT THEN to do whatever I think of!

10:02 p.m. || I have my standard end-of-night snack: a small mug of healthy cereal. The night is winding down, and Ryan and I are curled up on the couch with our laptops. Pinterest for me, Amazon reviews for him. We are the coolest. We stop now and then to tell stories from our day and exchange useless trivia. These common, low-key nights are my favorite.

10:16 p.m. || I check the weather to see if there will be any impact on our drive to church tomorrow and then peek ahead to Monday to see what the weather looks like around the time of Ryan's surgery. If they're right, looks like we should be okay all the way around. It's Indiana, though, so this forecast could change 100 times between now and Monday.

10:30 p.m. || I load all our dinner/snack dishes into the dishwasher, reapply oils, refill the diffuser to run while we sleep, and check to make sure Ryan turned on the heated mattress pad. He has, of course. He's good with the details.

10:48 p.m. || My calves are tight and sore, which is not unusual, so Ryan is kind enough to give me a leg massage. He claims I could sit for a 24 hour massage and he's probably right. He's yawning, so my guess is this won't be a 24 hour massage, but I'm loving it anyway!

11:15 p.m. {ish} || We both fall asleep watching football, which is a sign it's about time to call it a night.

11:36 p.m. || We drag ourselves to bed and turn on Friends, which is typically what we fall asleep watching. We talk for a few minutes and Braeya crawls up beside Ryan. Not sure how long we stay awake before we finally conk out!

All in all, it was a very good and productive Saturday. Maybe we're not as boring as I thought! :) And that's a day in the life of Shafferland, January 2017!

In Which We Find a New (Possibly Temporary) Normal

You know how dearly I love a new year, and for this one, I worked hard to develop a plan that would help me be more purposeful in running after goals and better habits. It was all nerdy and color coded. Ridiculously wonderful is probably the best term for it.

And then, you know. Emergency Room visits and doctor appointments and all manner of things that had not been pre-scheduled in any color on the pretty pages of my planner. (I told Ryan yesterday we should probably just throw in the towel, buy a pill sorter, and go on with our lives.)

Suddenly all the meals that I had so carefully planned out and shopped for had to be modified, because right now, Ryan can't have...well, it's probably just fastest to say most foods. We eat a lot of Mexican spices and tomato-sauce laden foods, and pretty much all of that is out right now. No sloppy joes. No turkey burgers. No lasagna. No chicken taco soup. No nachos and cheese during football.

And my wifely skills were taking a pretty sharp beating with every single can of chicken noodle soup I popped open and dumped in a saucepan to heat up.

While I've been banging on the door of Heaven begging God for healing/answers/anything that pushes us in the right direction, I've also been struggling with satisfaction with our now.

All 26 alphabetical dates that I pre-planned last year and we were supposed to start this week have to be put on hold because they all contain foods Ryan can't have right now.

All my menu planning had to be redone. In fact, it straight up felt like all my cooking skills had to be re-learned, because suddenly, he can't have anything we ever eat.

All our days had to be scheduled at the last minute, because I never knew if we might have to pause for a new doctor's appointment or another ER visit. (And I'm the kind of girl who will pull an all-nighter to finish crossing stuff off my list because I can't abide by undone to-do lists.)

So this past week was a great opportunity for God to reshape my spirit a bit. A chance for me to relearn what really matters, and none of it includes my plans. A chance for me to find joy in serving Ryan through learning to cook new dishes and learning to put aside the things I've been so excited about to make room for new, more urgent focuses, like finding healing for the long haul and a semblance of normal for our now.

Yesterday I happened upon this post by Josh Buck, who I've known almost my whole life, but who I know most from interviewing him and his wife a couple of times back when I worked at WBCL. Josh was paralyzed in an accident ten years ago, and he has struggled with multiple health problems in the time that has passed. The post tells of his latest hospitalization and the extreme, horrific pain he's encountering. I read every line, about all the medications, all the decisions that have to be made, all the ways one thing affects another, and suddenly, learning to cook chicken in 34 new ways really didn't matter anymore.

And because I've read enough of what Josh's wife has written, I know her normal has been changed about a million times, and yet somehow she approaches it with grace and see it as an opportunity to serve and find a new angle to keeping the vows she made years ago.

So our days don't always go like we plan them (in color) in our pretty planners. And sometimes we have to find a new normal. Or a temporary normal. And it may feel awkward at first, but it really is a privilege in its own way. The key (which I will not claim to have mastered yet) is to look at it that way.

I'm grateful for Ryan. I'm grateful for our life. And if I need to learn to live on chicken for the foreseeable future and if we have to postpone our fun alphabetical dates for a while, we'll do it. Because what matters most is his health and finally seeing a smile on his handsome face.

A Little Give and Take

Yesterday I trekked to Fort Wayne to visit the dentist. Again. :) I have roughly six more months left in my two year dental rehab program, and I'm hoping hoping hoping they'll be able to declare me well by then!

{If you're new here, back in August of 2014, I had a five hour periodontal surgery, and I've had to go to the dentist every three months since then for checkups. I had an advancing periodontal disease, and through the surgery, they were able to get me on the road to recovery!}

I was so grateful for a good day to travel for my checkup yesterday, especially after some snow and ice on the roads in the last couple of weeks. I packed up the car with coffee and snacks and extra coats and hats, and then I called my mom to chat while I drove.

Just like the commuting days of old.

Before I went to the dentist, I stopped by the station to say hi. I didn't get to see everyone, but it was fun to get some hugs and swap stories and see my friends. They asked how I'm doing, what I'm up to, and they were kind to tell me they missed me.

And I miss them too. It's strange to transition from being in a place full of people and their stories to being home with a cat whose constant story is "CAN YOU WATCH ME EAT?" It's strange to give up up hearing the joys and struggles of a work crew that felt more like family. It's strange to miss out on the celebrations of their lives and only read about them from afar.

But as I told Mom during our talk yesterday, I am confident that I'm in the right place for this season. For as much as I miss what I left behind, I adore what I see before me. I love being able to do meaningful work throughout the day that relieves the stress of Ryan's evenings and weekends. I love being able to write and read books. I love so many other opportunities that we've been able to enjoy because of this change in seasons.

God is opening up even more doors, and even though many of them are not open wide enough yet for me to see through them to the other side, I'm excited for the prospect of what I might find when I step through.

I'm thankful for the courage to be able to offer what I had in exchange for what He has for me. It's worth it, you know...the give and take. The offering of a sacrifice and the blessing He offers in return.

The Shafferland Shuffle

* Last Sunday was so beautiful, with fresh snow on the ground. Pretty to look at, but a MESS to drive in, so I was thankful that it was Sunday and we didn't have to commute anywhere! I worked SO HARD all afternoon to finish the last chronological scrapbook for 2015, and I finished it!! That night we {finally, 10 days late!} went through our 2015 box of memories and enjoyed sorting through them and reading the thoughts we'd written a year ago on New Year's Eve!

* Monday was so messy on the roads, so I prayed Ryan to work while giving much thanks that I'm no longer driving to Fort Wayne every day. I enjoyed the beauty of the snow from INSIDE the house. I made a fancier-than-usual dinner of veggie stuffed chicken and more veggies {I'm turning into a veggie, I think} and because it was SO COLD, I worked out in my fuzzy socks. It was hard for our house to keep up with the frigid temps! Thank goodness this isn't supposed to be a Polar Vortex year!

* Tuesday, I moved back into my office to begin working from there again, and Braeya was excited because that meant she could resume her neighborhood watch program. I worked hard on editing the manuscript I just finished - and did some reading in a novel as well. When Ryan got home, we hunkered down under the electric blanket, and Braeya hunkered on top of it. When that thing is on, she will NOT leave it.

* Wednesday was cold and snowy still, but we did have a stunning sunrise that I appreciated from my perch at my desk! Because the cold continued, that day I worked out in warm clothes AND my bathrobe AND my slippers. LOL!! Ryan got a new hat that day - one of the girls at work made it for him, and he loves it!

* Thursday was the first day I got out of the house all week. It had just been too nasty before then. I met a friend for lunch and felt like a real person in real clothes with my hair done. Much to my shock, my scrapbook I'd just finished on SUNDAY actually arrived in the mail that day, so my 2015 regular book collection is complete! After work, Ryan and I went to look for sales, and I found a great long-sleeved workout shirt that, with coupons and sales, we got for $1.87. BOOM.

* Friday morning, I grabbed this picture of a beautiful sunrise, and literally five minutes later, the sky was overcast and stayed that way all day. I was glad I captured it! I did lots of chores on Friday, including menu planning. A good little day, capped off by a Starbucks date and a movie rental that we could watch all curled up in the fat chair!

* Yesterday I attended a ministry project event that I plan to tell you more about this week; the work it does is both creative and much needed, I believe. It was good to be part of the day and see friends I haven't seen in so long! And last night, we celebrated Ryan's sister's birthday with his family. His mom made homemade {delicious, I might add} pizza and we had cake and ice cream and enjoyed a laid-back evening together!

In the Pocket

Yesterday morning I spent some time cleaning up paperwork in my office at home. We just "cleaned" the office last week. {And by "cleaned," I mean we put everything we didn't have the stamina to deal with at this time in a series of boxes and put them away so we could think clearly without the distraction of the mess.}

It's funny how a clear desk inspires me to write, and I've been a writing, editing fool all week long. I felt, therefore, the need to keep it as clean as I can - really clean - not adding-more-boxes-to-the-stack clean.

As I tucked a quote onto our message board, I saw a scribbled note from months ago. It contained a quote my dear friend Polly emailed me shortly after I left the station: God has you in the pocket - the pocket of your passion and gifting and joy.

After taking the month of December "off" from my regular schedule of writing and editing and researching and planning and such, these past two weeks have been my re-entry to this new life God has led me to live. I've been back to "office hours" and working on the projects He's put on my heart.

For a girl like me, who thrives on things like routine, this return to normal has been a welcome blessing. But there's always the voice that whispers that I maybe could or should be doing more. Something tangible. Something that makes a bigger difference.

Seeing Polly's words reminded me that this is my more. This is my tangible. This makes a difference. This is my pocket. This is the place God has carved out for me for this season, and I'm swimming in a place of passion and gifting and joy.

Maybe others don't see it that way, and that's okay. But this is the pocket I prayed to be able to be in for so long. And now I'm here! As I scribbled down brainstorms and made plans for more words on paper, I remembered in fresh ways that this pocket is a beautiful place to be. It might not be understood, and it may not be common. But it's a welcomed pocket.

{How's life in your pocket?}

The Shafferland Shuffle

* Last Sunday night, Hallmark aired the movie based on the Karen Kingsbury book, The Bridge, and my friend Sandee had invited me to watch it with her and some of her friends and family. Ryan assured me he could represent us in watching the Colts game and told me to go watch and have a good time. So I did! I enjoyed the movie {though not waiting a year to see the end of it} - and it was extra fun to see my book on the coffee table in the host's home!!

* Monday morning was fine - and then I looked up while I worked on our podcast and noticed it had suddenly gotten foggy. That's odd! It's odd for fog to settle as far in town as where we live, so I can only imagine what it was like out in the country! I spent the day polishing our "new" dining room table and chairs - and I thought they turned out quite shiny and lovely!

* Tuesday's task was addressing Christmas cards - a huge job, but definitely easier when I had an entire day to do it! Ryan and I got a new gift from his mom - a coffee Christmas rug. How perfect is this!?!?!? Not perfect was the help we received while working out. Bench press that, Braeya!! LOL!

* Wednesday I mailed my cards, and I ended up sitting in the Walgreen's parking lot with a washcloth, sealing them all in the front seat of the car. I'm so classy!! Ryan asked if I would buy him some gum - and I had to make a big deal out of it because as you may or may not know, I hate EVERYTHING about gum. {I'm so weird.} That night Ryan FINALLY got the alternator off his truck. He's been working on it for about a month but kept running into issues. He was pretty happy it was done.

* Thursday I had a HUGE treat: I got to watch our friends Nate and Jenna's kiddos for a little bit. They are adorable and we had a good little time. Apparently our house was the coolest because we had all the cartoon channels. :)

* I started wrapping gifts on Friday - and it was fun to do with Christmas movies playing in the background! It was SO WARM on Friday that we walked the light display in the park without even wearing hats or gloves - or very warm coats! It was the most fun date. I'm so glad we had a good night to go. {The first two years we went, it was snowing when we arrived, and we had to drive it!}

* Yesterday we got to SLEEP IN and eat breakfast at home - which was so lovely! We went to a birthday party for a friend's kiddo who turned one, and then we set out to finish as much of our Christmas shopping as we could! It was a good all-day date day! And can I tell you how much fun that is to do when it's almost seventy degrees IN DECEMBER?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?