Catherine Marshall wrote of writing: “I always found it harder to get started on a Monday morning. After a vacation longer than Friday to Monday, it would sometimes take me days to get underway again.”

I have found the same principle at work with anything I do–writing, house cleaning, driving, and even Facebook. Gives fresh meaning to that television commercial that states, “A body in motion stays in motion.” Same for mind, hands, intentions.

My friend Kathleen prodded me and said a most lovely phrase: “Think of us when you can.” Oh, I think of you all so very often, my friends and family all across the country, close as my breath. That is something I never drop. And thanks, Kathleen, for a great title for a book.

Fire in the fireplace–that’s another thing that I dropped and it took deliberate effort to begin having again, a fire in the fireplace– tea at hand, and soon the house will be hopping with two little ones. But for now I’ve enjoyed a few hours of reading, writing, and thinking, my favorite activities. Today I’ll be choosing deliberately things to keep doing. It is a fight to keep life from stealing all those things we love from us. You know, distractions and difficulties are going to come, you don’t have to choose them, but the good and fine and all you really want in your life you must deliberately choose to do and be.

Oh, and dear ones, my new roof is finally done! I’ll know how good it is when we get a hard rain. 

Enjoy your lives today, deliberately.