The Simple Life

I find myself in a unique position these days. I love my life. It is full of wonderful things: a family of friends, a man that I love, a job that's about the Gospel, a church family that is on mission, a lovely home to call my own, I could go on (and on). On the other hand, life is complicated. All these good things take time, lots of time, and I find that the margin of my life is getting slimmer and slimmer.

I've been blaming the fuzzy lines in my life for this complexity lately - my job that is my church that pushes against my relationship with God and my boyfriend that's also a colleague and my best friend whose husband is kind of my boss. See. It's complicated. I'm sure that some of the lack of simplicity in my life is from those things, but I don't think that's the real culprit. It's a given that I could be better about balancing the various boundaries in my schedule (work vs. play and friends), but I think it's something much deeper that I'm looking for and I don't think that just rearranging the time slots on my calendar is going to meet my craving.

It's space I'm looking for. This weekend I was out of town at my brother's wedding in Sainte Genevieve, MO. We were in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rolling hills filled with trees on fire with the colors of autumn. We walked the town and stopped to talk with the ladies of the local quilting bee. We sampled apple butter and stopped on the side of the road to watch an unexpected tractor parade roll through town. There was no rush. No deadlines. No email. I found myself daydreaming of a life where my schedule was set by the sun, where I grew my own food and churned my own butter, filled with evening around the fire with friends and family.

It's an idyllic picture of the simple life. And, it's not really the answer. The reality has to be somewhere in the middle, but I don't know how to get there.