The stay-at-home mandate has been lifted.  Home schooling has come to a close.  You are beyond ready for summer.  Except, wait... something feels different.  Everything is cancelled!

Here's to the summer of bored and why there's beauty to be found in it... along with a list of ideas coming from the kid who spent her summer days imagining what to do next.

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/to-the-summer-of-bored

What if there is far more to ambition than the exhausting hustle and hurry that we have prescribed?  What if rest has nothing to do with luxury or a poor work ethic or laziness and everything to do your willingness to aggressively pour ambition into your soul.  Maybe we don't have to take a seat on the struggle bus to be ambitious.  Maybe ambition is a whole lot more.

*original writing on www.lucreziomusic.com/the-struggle-bus

*lettering by Anthony Colli

Hearing it from someone who gets our circumstances is many times the only hope we have... so long as they’re being real with us. I know I can only write from my own experience, which is why I thought our “guest” would be much better suited to speak just what you need to hear. Myself included.

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/under-house-arrest

Expectation. The word we place in front of expectations is everything, because honestly our expectations can become burdens or unfair standards by which we measure ourselves or those around us. But what if the very word, expectation, was proceeded by “breathless” or “eager.” And what if expectations became more about being content in where you’re at than to hope for where you’re not. I know the secret.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest 

John Ortberg (Menlo Church Podcast), transcribed from recording on April 5, 2020 "The Secret of Being Content"

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/i-know-the-secret/

Sometimes... or perhaps often times... hearing it elsewhere is not enough.

Storm Clouds print by Janet Jennings

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/how-you-holding-up/

Stuff is sneaky like that.  Where it parades around like little pieces of joy, even if underneath is rooted in insignificance or discontentment.

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/all-about-stuff-literally/

An Easter weekend kind of writing.  The thing about Saturday is that it solidifies Friday, and the weight you felt in that moment turns to waiting for a way out.  Saturdays are not one day.  They are several days, or weeks, or months, or years, or even an entire lifetime.

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/saturday/

The opportunity to stay home only created instead a longing for something else.  Something out.  Something without fear.  Something without walls.

Here is, I believe, why- only because I have felt it for myself.

We are unfamiliar with rest.

Sabbath.

*original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/shabbat/

"I just wonder if family was meant to do more of life together than apart."

These words themselves feel soft, but they are filled with a deep longing for something more for all of us. All who feel burdened by the confinement of home. All who wonder if maybe, just maybe, there is something about being together we have missed. Here’s to the beginning of a conversation.

*Original writing at www.lucreziomusic.com/a-thousand-generations/