What’s saving my life right now

It’s that time of year again…Groundhog Day.

It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.

While I might naturally agree with Phil Connors’ sentiments, a more helpful way to frame this midpoint of winter is to contemplate what’s saving my life, when it’s tempting to think of all the things (cold, darkness, etc) that are killing me.

Thanks to Modern Mrs. Darcy for hosting this every year.

What’s saving my life in 2018

What’s saving my life in 2019

What’s saving my life in 2020

What’s saving my life in 2021

What’s saving my life in 2022

What’s saving my life in 2023

Honorable mentions this year: 

1. Puzzles.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

Surely this doesn’t surprise anyone. I have a dedicated puzzle table in my room which almost always has a puzzle in progress. Right now I’m working on this one—a 1000-piece “Romantic Street Scene.” 

I’m kept in constant supply of puzzles because I volunteered to count the pieces of donated puzzles to my favorite thrift store. So every few months I go in the back room there, load up my bag with puzzles of my choice, and work through them all. Then I return them and either leave them in one pile with a note that they’re missing pieces, or I stick an official sticker on them saying “This puzzle has been checked for missing pieces.” Then they can sell them at a higher price than the get-what-you-get boxes. And *I* get endless puzzles.

2. Good books and time to read them.

Photo by Tom Hermans on Unsplash

Just before we went to St. Lucia, I finished Little Dorrit, one of Charles Dickens’ longer novels. I decided to tackle it (all 900 pages) because I felt it would make me a more cultured and educated person, but I actually really enjoyed it.

In St. Lucia I read a perfect beach read, Veronica Mars: The Thousand Dollar Tan Line; a book by Jennifer Graham and Rob Thomas that I gather is based on a TV series that features a cute, blonde 20-something improbably solving murders in a spring break town.

On the way back from St. Lucia, mercifully, since it took us, ahem, longer than expected, I had Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson and read it cover to cover. I love an unreliable narrator and I do enjoy a novel about mommy politics, and this had both. It features a neighborhood mommy book club that quickly turns dark, which is a great premise.

Since coming home, I’m reading Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald to help cope with my post-vacation reentry. It takes place in Grand Central Station and is apparently thoroughly researched; when I told Caleb all I was learning about Grand Central and how trains work, he was confused why I was reading it, until I clarified that it’s actually a love story.

3. Espresso pods.

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

I don’t know if it was just association or if they truly had great coffee in St. Lucia, but I came home with more of a taste for it than ever. I discovered that our favorite brand of compostable K-cups has an espresso roast. It’s not the same as being served a freshly pulled affogato while overlooking the sunny Caribbean Sea, but it is pretty good, and richer than the regular pods.

What’s most of all saving my life right now

Puzzles, books, and espresso are pretty great, but what’s truly keeping my sanity intact is Ada getting her license.

Photo by Zac Ong on Unsplash

She got it just before Jason and I left town. In the past four weeks, she has driven

• To see her own friends
• Herself and her sister to youth group four times—including going early for worship team practice
• To the grocery store while we were gone
• Her brother to the jump park
• To run her own errands
• Herself and her sister to Bible study
• To a clothes swap one of her friends hosted
• To play in a volleyball tournament early on a Saturday morning
• To pick up pizza a few days after we returned, when Jason was out of town for work, I was in agony with a massive rash, one of our cars was inexplicably broken down, and a water main in town broke, leaving us without running water right before dinnertime

She and we both love that she can see her friends whenever she wants, even if they live 40 minutes away. And when she asked if she could run track this spring I could say, Sure! This affects my life not at all!

What a blessing that the occasion of my teenager getting a license is cause for more comfort than fear. Not that I don’t pray for her safety on the road, because I do, but having her help drive herself and others…it’s saving my life.