Outside my window: Day has dawned, cloudy. The leaves on the three big maples in the front yard are out in their leafy splendor. There’s a breeze moving through them, but it looks chilly, just like weather.com tells me it is. It’s chilly here in the house, but that’s to be expected for this time of year.

Rambling thoughts: Discernment is a beautiful, painful thing. I seem to need it every two or three months, and here we are, with me in the midst of discernment. I’m also trying to write my conversion story/faith journey in a cognizant and interesting way. Maybe I’ll post it, but maybe I won’t. Someone I love asked me about it, and I felt the voice of God in their request. I’ve been meaning to write it for, oh, years. But it’s hard. (Don’t roll your eyes at me! I am the eye-roller in these parts! Yes, but that sentence makes me roll my eyes at myself.) I am wondering if the link between my discernment process and my call to write my faith journey are linked…

In thanksgiving: For Sundays at the horse farm. For small girls who visit and play and invent worlds in my house. For peace in passing, from life and in life.

Nose inserted: The Apostles, by Benedict XVI, which I am trying to finish this week. (We’ll see. It’s not long, and it’s not particularly hard reading, but…we’ll see.) I have a couple of other books going too, but they’re on hold, so I’m not mentioning them here.

In my ears: Silence right now, the Divine Mercy Chaplet in a bit, and probably podcasts during work, but I have an appetite for Sarah Bauer (when don’t I have an appetite for Sarah Bauer?) so maybe that will trump the podcasts, or complement them, or something.

Around the house: Silence. Four hours at the horse farm yesterday, including hard playing and nap skipping, left my girls plum tuckered out. I’ll go upstairs when I’m done here and revel in their first-thing-in-the-morning smiles.

A favorite thing: Two small heads, bent together, working on a project that involves rocks, water, dirt-turned-mud, and giggling.

Food for thought: I’m reading about Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament this week, and I came across an excellent quote from St. Peter Julian Eymard about the month of Mary, the month of Mary, shared at Behold Your Mother today.

Worth a thousand words: