I found a box yesterday, the packing tape still carefully tucked over the seams. I recognized it almost immediately. It was one of the first boxes I packed, at only a few weeks postpartum with my twins, gently nestling inside my most favorite wall hangings.
An embroidery hoop with the words “The Kelley Family Cottage” that I had commissioned by our previous tenant, who also happens to be an incredible embroidery hoop artist. (click here to follow and support her work!) A watercolor painting of two olive branches, one in flower, one in fruit, done by my friend Jeana. A couple of cute Hobby Lobby signs with favorite scriptures. A cross stitch of an Irish blessing done by my great-grandma Emma—whom I never met, but whose other cross stitch embroidery hangs in my kitchen, just as it hung in my maternal Grandmother’s kitchen all of her earthly life.
I had looked for this very box a few times over the past year, mostly to find our Kelley Family Cottage sign, (I had forgotten the lion’s share of what I had tucked away in that same box—did I mention I was only a few weeks postpartum with the twins when I packed it?) But every time I searched for it, I came up empty. I searched high and low in our broken-down-box-disaster of a garage. I looked everywhere I thought one our our well-intentioned mover/helpers might have put it by mistake. I even looked under the very steps where I ultimately found it when I was rooting around for the remains of our school supply stash in preparation for a new academic year—but somehow all those times before, I kept missing it.
But the joy I felt in this discovery, was exquisite. The time it was missing, and the length for which I looked, and the time I spent almost giving up on finding it, made it so. And the subsequent unpacking and hanging up of all these precious decorations felt like a nice way to celebrate the year since we began our wildly crazy move down to this small town, away from nearly everything we knew in the place we had loved for over a decade.
As I put these beauties up on the walls—walls that needed that blank time and space to see what they wanted to become—I felt like a broken circle was finally closing. What came before is sitting on the shelf behind me, and what is ahead is a basket full of the rainbow of vegetables I harvested this past week, and the wildflowers in my front yard, and even the thistles that I have picked and brought into the house because their petals are so beautiful.
We have spent the last year becoming accustomed to the quiet and the blank space. We needed it. But now we can begin to fill some spaces in. Some of the spaces will fill in with new and unexpected beauty like the thistles of our front yard—and perhaps some will be filled with beauty that has been buried in the basement, with us all along, but somehow just out of reach.
There are parts of myself, beautiful and favorite parts, that have been buried beneath trauma and sleeplessness and anxiety—but I’m finding now that these parts were not lost forever as I had once feared. Instead, they have been like the seed planted deep in the earth, needing darkness and quiet and time to break open and flourish once more.
This past week I started a little freelance copy and content writing business, and already it has been so encouraging and life giving to see how this gift can be used to help others to build their passion fueled businesses, and to help serve my own family financially in the increasingly tight times we are all living in. In so many ways, this is part of the fruit that I have been laboring for for the past decade I have spent writing since I graduated college. And I hope and pray, that these financial blessings will allow me to continue showing up here generously, without always worrying “how am I going to pay for that?”
Perhaps none of this is particularly profound— but I hope you find this as an encouragement today. If you are in a season of feeling like maybe the best parts of yourself are buried in the basement, but you can’t quite find where—don’t worry. Give it time. These things have a way of turning up at just the right moment. And whether you can see it or not, you are still beautiful and beloved by the God who sees right down to every box in your basement.
Thank you for being here Dear Reader.
Warmly,
Grace E. Kelley
Once again, dear one, you bless. I always feel like I’m sitting across the table from you and you’re speaking right to me. Thank you for the investment you continue to make so that we, your readers, can learn, grow, and ponder.
Oh how I know these words. I hope, even in my older days, that I am able to re-find myself from the “trauma, sleeplessness and anxiety.” 🙏🏻🕯🕊🤍💚