My friend Susan posted a comment to my February 18th Lent post that moved me. Suz and I played volleyball together at Liberty, and I feel — like I do about so many of those girls I played with — as though we grew up together. Surviving ages 18-22 in each other’s company, away from home, binds you to one another like little else.

Suz wrote that she wants to hold on to her daughters and be present with them, but the day just seems to get away from her. And before she’s had a chance to act on her intentions, the day is done. In her letting go category, she mentioned the word “despair,” which is the exact word I’ve been thinking about lately.

Last year, I read Kathleen Norris’ Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life, and it profoundly challenged me. It’s a somewhat dense book that you really have to wade through at times because the concepts are simultaneously very new and very old and always very relevant. Even though I read the book months ago, I’m still hanging on to so many passages. In fact, after I completed the book, I spent a whole day at the Coronado Library typing up underlined sentence after underlined sentence and I keep them on my computer. I’ve quoted her endlessly since.

Norris talks about the seasons in her life when she has been overcome with this cloud that just hangs over her life and renders her numb or depressed or despairing. Some of this she attributes to the “demon” of acedia, originally one of the deadly sins that is still commonly named and experienced among monastics. She likened her writing life and her married life, and ultimately the caring for her terminally ill husband, to the daily life of the monk who must begin anew each day and who often finds despair in that infinite task. Somehow that book reached inside me, a very new mother and a very new author, and gave words to my propensity for escapism and numbness and the general blahs. Kathleen, if you’re out there, you saved me! You really did.

And now, I find myself circling back to some of those same feelings, and I know I need to be proactive in caring for myself and my soul. Perhaps, more proactive than I’ve been lately. That’s part of despair, isn’t it. It lulls you and then you realize your life has lost some of the luster you love and crave.

I cried at my Growth Group on Tuesday night when I said I didn’t want a single day to go by that I didn’t appreciate the gift that my babies are to me. Some days I just lose track of myself and of them, like what Susan was saying, and I forget how magical it is that they are mine and I am theirs.

Additionally, Steve has been gone two of the last three weeks, and I always feel a little more spiny and ruffled and vulnerable when he’s away. I feel his absence for myself and I also feel it for the babies, which makes it a double hit. I was buoyed by all the help I got this week, all those who reach out to me even when I don’t know to reach out to them. I think of all those military wives/mothers who are far from friends and family, and I wonder how they do it.

Every year for Lent my church invites a handful of us to write devotions that are posted on the church’s website. This year I wrote three: “Trouble on the Parade Route” (Feb 21), “When Life Doesn’t Resolve” (Feb 22), and “Unspokens” (Feb 23) that you can read at http://www.diveintoflood.com/impactblog/archives/category/impact/resources/lent2010/page/2. I’m especially resonating with “When Life Doesn’t Resolve” today because I want so badly to give you a clean resolution to this post, but it’s not in me. I guess what I will say with certainty (maybe this is a resolution of sorts) is that God’s invitation for me today is to participate. The despair makes me want to check out. But God is inviting me to participate. In healing. In grieving. In beauty. In truth. I don’t know how any of these big feelings in me will resolve or what it will take to get to the other side of them, but I just know I have to participate. Those are my marching orders.

I’d really love to know how you participate, how you handle those creeping feelings that seem to blow in like a cloud-cover and hang over your soul. Where do you turn when you feel that way? What helps to let the sun in? How do you choose to participate in your life even when you don’t feel like it?

The Found Art blog tour kicked off yesterday! Oh la la. Check out this very cool photography challenge at http://tasramar.com/2010/03/found-art-discovering-beauty-in-foreign-places-giveaway-challenge/. I’ve got some photos posted on Tasra’s site, and I’d love to see what you come up with. Where do you see beauty and inspiration? Capture your vision of found art.

Texture is one of the most beautiful things in the world to me. I love rusted iron, layers of paint, galvanized metal, brown chipboard, rough burlap. Somehow the whole disparity creates a collage to me, keeping my eye interested. When I look at the above picture (taken in my “a room of one’s own” — courtesy V. Woolf), I feel myself inspired, readied, with a little surge of adrenaline and hope. To me texture, in its own strange way, is not only the art itself but the symbol that life is alive, faceted, unexpectedly creative, and full of weird beauty.

Most days of my current life, I reach a certain moment when all the texture is gone, all the light is flat, and the numbing beige settles in (cue the eating, shopping, TV watching, escaping, and perhaps even a little despairing). Yesterday, I wake up out of this stupor and realize we’re officially in Lent, which probably isn’t the greatest way to enter into the Lenten season–caught off guard and totally, unintentionally unprepared. Amid the Winter Olympics, Valentine’s candy, and a Gap Kids sale, I just blanked. Then, I remember I’m offering a Found Art Workshop next week on the theme of “Holding On and Letting Go,” and I realize, without even planning it, that those are the exact themes of Lent.

To that end, I wrote a Lent List . . .

Holding on to — writing space and time, meaningful moments with Steve, regular breaks, hope that I will survive year 1 to 2 with my children, that baby-gazing thing I wrote about in my last post, rest and truth, a couple of good books, texture

Letting go of — perfectionism, mind-numbing TV watching, fear that I will always feel tired, churning anxiety, blah beige

I wrote the list while heaving deep breaths because I know it takes a lot of courage to actually do anything about any of this. Then I remembered something I had heard on the radio last week . . .

Jim Rome was interviewing Duke’s Coach Krzyzewski (yes, of course I had to google the spelling). I was driving to Target (AKA Mecca) with the babies, and my eyes went oogly from the abrupt arrival of watery tears. Coach K, who BTW I would like to channel the next time I’m doing a radio interview–cool as a cucumber, starts talking about one of his players. And he says, “He’s a warrior, Jim. That kid is a beautiful warrior.” And he said it with this tone of unforgettable persuasion and compassion. Jim Rome just let the words sit for a split second, and the moment was full and took on a dimension far beyond radio and sports, and then Rome says, “Ladies and Gentlemen, Coach Freaking K.” I love laughing and crying at the exact same moment.

So with the warrior spirit, I am turning toward the texture in my life.  Even though the surfaces often feel overwhelmingly unsmooth and the paint is worn and the cloth of my soul feels irreparably tattered on certain days, I remind myself of how much I love all the textures, how they play with one another and adhere to each other and create something important overall.

And if all else fails, I’ll just keep whispering to myself, “Coach Freaking K. Coach Freaking K. Coach Freaking K.”

Post your Lent List, you beautiful warrior, you. What true living texture do you need to embrace? What blah beige impostor do you need to relinquish?

Lots of Lenten Love.

This morning I woke up more hopeful and more energized than I’ve been in weeks.

Part of it is because I went to bed early the last two nights, and sleep generally seems to mitigate a number of ills.

Part of it is because I’m still basking in the afterglow of my weekend at Asilomar, a too-quick three days spent seaside retreating with nine beauties whom I love and admire. Every year we stop for lunch at this European inspired home-turned-dining-nook called Casanova’s in unparalleled Carmel (brief inspiration . . . at Casanova’s instead of serving water in the restaurant-supply-store water pitchers, they bring de-labeled wine bottles to your table full of chilled water. The bottles add just the right little something to the tables and serve as both function and décor equally. I’m de-labeling wine bottles as we speak. A wire basket displays them beautifully. A clever reclamation project.) My incredibly innovative friend, Katie (www.katiegardnerphoto.com) created a tribute montage of the weekend: http://vimeo.com/9194506. Enjoy! I am entirely indebted for this memorializing.

Part of it is because I went to Pat’s (a strange collection of oddities available below! thrift store prices that can be painted and distressed any color you want) this past Friday. In the treasure-laden back lot, behind the store, I found myself co-digging with a man in a cashmere sweater who turned to me and said, “This place is a gold mine!” Couldn’t have said it better myself. I left with a white shelf that looks like it was made from distressed molding and an iron plant stand (with the perfect ratio of rust to paint) which I’ll be using to store art supplies. All the digging and finding helps me breathe.

Part of it is because I had an exceptionally fun evening with Steve this weekend. We went to Ponce’s, our very favorite authentic Mexican food eatery that has the limiest (and therefore most delicious) salsa verde you have ever experienced. Steve had chorizo and eggs, and I had tortilla soup and a grilled chicken salad with extra guacamole. Total heaven. After dinner, we walked around the mall, with decaf Americano in hand, and found ourselves on the floor in Anthropologie digging through the doorknobs until we found the perfect mercury glass pair for me to use for a little project I’m doing in my little creative space/art studio/writing room (and, in a rare turn of events, they weren’t even that expensive, unlike the first pair I held up that were $78. ugggh.). After the knob find, we headed to Trader Joe’s for coconut milk and wine bottles (after all, I had to get more supplies for my aforementioned project). For some reason, Steve and I had the space to really connect. All this in the pouring rain. Soul food, I tell you.

Part of it is because I have decided to take one moment in every day and put my eyes on my kids, one at a time, intentional like. Of course, I look at my kids all day, every day, between the shushing, and schlepping, and shuttling. But do I really see them? Looking and seeing are two very different things, I’m learning. They probably find the whole routine awkward, but I just lock onto them and practice the discipline of gazing. Sometimes I look right into their eyes. I want them to know I see them. And it’s making me a better mom, already. Seriously. Who knew?!?

So here’s to a few simple-yet-sensational S’s: sleeping, seaside-ing, salvaging, salsa-ing, and seeing.

Oh, and Steve. We can’t forget about him.

Sincerely yours.

The rain continues to fall here in San Diego. Uncharacteristic amounts of water everywhere. I like to think of it as tears from heaven, God still mourning the Chargers’ loss to the Jets. We’re all in ruins over it. The whole city. Ruins.

This weekend, I will be licking my year-after-year-Charger-inflicted wounds (why do I even let myself hope anymore) at one of the most enchanting places on earth . . . Asilomar, a woodsy little conference ground that sits right on the Monterey Peninsula, next door to Carmel by the Sea. I’m telling you, you can barely stand the beauty. Chapter 27, “Dancing,” from Found Art includes a story set on this very beach.

I take this pilgrimage annually with a group of friends (9 of us this year) to attend the Menlo Park Pres Women’s retreat. As a part of the retreat, I’ll be facilitating a workshop on Saturday afternoon, which I am very much looking forward to.

Another salve for my Charger-wound came in the form of an all-day women’s event (hosted by Flood Church) last Saturday that I was invited to facilitate. We spent the entire day talking about the theme of inspiration, and we enjoyed a rare break in the rain at the Carlsbad beach. It was heaven for me. My favorite moments of the day were as follows: (1) During an hour of personal reflection time, I went for a walk on the bluff above the beach and walked by almost every woman attending the conference. Some were praying, some were journaling, some were staring out into the ocean, some were listening to music, reading, napping. I loved seeing these women sitting outside, breathing, taking in life. (2) Walking around the room while the women were creating their own personal clothesline (a little project I had them do that incorporated some of their favorite muses from the day). Few things are more inspirational to me than creating, and I especially love watching other women get past their “craft-anxieties” and create their own little found art pieces. (3) When I said, “Courage is the new black.” I thought that was particularly clever. (4) How I felt comfortable enough in my own skin and with those women to cry a minimum of probably 6 times throughout the day. I’m so soft when it comes to this topic! (5) I was able to use my new, “professional,” raspberry patent leather tote that Steve got me for my birthday. In the words of Rachel Zoe, “I die.” (6) Seeing women awaken.

I’ll leave you with a recent dream I had about Michael Phelps who, in the dream, was named Shane Kim and was coming over to our house because he wanted to date me. Shane Kim was a renowned world-class athlete in the Olympic sport of Frisbee Windsurfing (this is all true) and was all over the news because of his recent accomplishments. For some reason, he had his eye on me. Though I was married to Steve and we had the babies, everyone was aflutter with the fact that Shane Kim was coming over and no one seemed the slightest bit concerned with the minor detail that I was already married.

I was relating the dream to my mom in great detail, mentioning how he was sitting on our couch and how his hands touched the ground because he has those really strangely long arms and how he was so good with the twins and on and on and she stopped me and said, “Leeana, do you need some attention?”

Always, mom. Always.