Like most of the country, it’s been COLD around here.

Then warm again with coats unnecessary; then frigid temps once more. An odd turn of weather considering the month of year. Personally I could welcome spring any day, but the REST winter provides I so enjoy.

Snippets of time find me organizing. Not exactly restful, yet helpful.

It’s a story for another time, this current need to bring order. Sorting and decluttering through the created chaos left by another feels altogether different than my normal post-holiday purge.

But purge and organize I do.

I’ve decided cast iron pans a necessity in my kitchen. How did I ever cook without them?

Even when I accidentally left a pan ‘out to dry’ and it rusted by morning, all was well after a quick restoration process. Trusty, these pans.

I still find extended kitchen time such a gift. A way to knead, bake, saute and cook my way through thoughts — and even time to pray.

No separation of the sacred and the secular – truth?

Our work offered as prayer suggests cooking and cleaning a pathway to God, one avenue of connection. The everyday tasks we must do take on fresh perspective.

If you struggle with when to have ‘quiet time’ and when to care for household chores and the kids and the… well, perhaps inhale and exhale this thought:  offer your work as prayer. Pray as you go.

The new year offers me new planners! Call it extensive or excessive, but three planners are in regular rotation.

I’m going on my fifth year with an Erin Condren Life Planner (top navy blue), using a neutral hourly layout. For $10 off your first purchase of anything on the site, feel free to use this affiliate link.

For a little more on the other planners, Emily Ley (middle) and the Sacred Ordinary Days liturgical planner (bottom), see my Instagram post until more details come to the blog.

Yes there is Nancy.

We more naturally gravitate towards a need to hold one or the other. Particularly in America, it seems we rush grieving and contemplating our losses (or allowing others to do the same).

But there is hope. We can be freed to hold both.

: :

Hoping your 2018 start has been pleasant, even if cold!