I started this blog almost exactly two years ago. My first post came on August 31, 2018. In it, I announced the blog and the would-be book to come of it. I thought the book would be about something different back then.

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I’ve sat on different porches over the last two years. Front porches, back porches, beach porches… I’ve sat on several metaphorical porches. I often think of the small stool I sat on in my best friend’s kitchen, she chopped vegetables, our teens sat in the basement, I told her how it really was all falling apart this time. This was it. I could feel it. It was coming undone.

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Chop.

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Chop.

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Listen.

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Chop.

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I waited for the judgment, or the bandaid, or the fix-it-all answer. Of course, she didn’t offer those. She knew. She could see. She listened.

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The porches in Florida have healing power. To sit and watch the waves, the dolphins, the birds, the sunrises, or sunsets. This year it became a place I could go to without running away from anything else. What a beautiful thing.

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The sound of the waves.

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Push.

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Pull.

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Crash.

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Push.

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Pull.

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Pull.

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Pull.

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Sitting around a campfire, cooking s’mores, being in nature, has become its own front porch for me. A healing balm after a stressful week. It doesn’t feel like running. It feels like retreating to a place that I find God, where he speaks to me, where I am in a place to hear him better. What a gift. What a piece of peace here on earth.

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Front porches.

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They call to us if we let them; to come and sit; to drink and talk; to rest. To simply be. Be in the presence of something simple and, oh, so complicated. To undo the thinking of the past. To undo the stress of the week. To undo and release. Sip a cup of coffee, drink a glass of wine, undo, recreate, tell a new story.