The east corner chair
The chair is in the east corner of my living room, where the morning light hits it first. Most days, before the house wakes up, I am already there — both hands around a mug that is ridiculously large, a stack of well-worn books within reach. That hour belongs to no one but me. It took me most of my life to learn that was allowed.
Inspirations of Joy is a place for gracious living — which is not the same thing as perfect living, or expensive living, or living that photographs well. It is the kind of living that opens the door before the house is ready — that notices the way afternoon light falls across an old table, that wears fuzzy socks all year just because. I write here for the woman who has forgotten, for a while, that her own home is also meant to be a refuge for her.
I spent twenty-six years as a single mother. I raised four children. I kept a household, never perfectly and often while barely holding it all together. I worked a demanding job, and then spent years on disability when getting out of bed some days was the whole accomplishment. Many meals more resembled burnt offerings. But some were simple and homemade and full of love you could taste — the kind Belva, my grandmother, would have recognized at her own table. I am in the grandma stage now. My adult son is still at home, working on getting his backside out the door of life. The mornings are mine. I have learned to keep them.
I write for three women at once because I have been all three. The thirty-something making her first solo home, learning to trust her own eye. The mother in the long middle of caregiving — children, aging parents, a marriage, a job, a household — who has been refilling everyone else's cup for so long that her own well has been dry for years, and who has, quietly, stopped noticing. The grandmother in the quiet that comes after, who has earned her chair and is still learning to sit in it without apologizing. I am the third one now. I write to all of us.
Most mornings, I make a ridiculous mug of hot chocolate, sit in my favorite chair, and spend an hour with scripture and the voices of people who help me think about God. That hour is the foundation everything else rests on. The blog is downstream of it. I won't preach at you on the home pages, but I won't pretend it isn't there, either. The truth is that gracious living is the best language for the life that my morning hour produces.
Somewhere in this house, a candle is lit for no reason in particular. The sunflowers on the table are not precious, but they bring me joy, and that is exactly why I love them. I have been a lot of things in my life; I am still becoming.
Pull up a chair. The mug is full, and the morning is not in a hurry.
