fresh pesto

Why is it when I write about my life, or frame bits of it up in pictures, it seems so much more beautiful and romantic than when I’m actually living it?  

Yesterday, the boys and I made fresh pesto.  Pesto!  You know, that gourmet green stuff which costs an arm and a leg that you get off the supermarket shelf in trendy little organic tubs?  I made my own pesto with basil from my herb garden and walnuts from a tree in our yard.  

{See?  It sounds so amazing to write “my herb garden”, but the actual living of bringing it into being was hours of squashing my ever-expanding belly into crouching positions to plant tiny seedlings and pull weeds, and then more hours of lugging heavy buckets of water since our flood-irrigation canals don’t reach that particular spot… way less romantic than the lovely phrase “my herb garden” would suggest!}

“Fresh pesto” sounds romantic too, and it is.  I don’t know why the combination of fresh basil leaves, walnuts (our substitute for pine nuts), garlic, olive oil and salt should be so “morish” (New Zealand-ese for “addicting”), but it is.  And somehow, the satisfaction of growing the two main ingredients on our borrowed land and gathering them with my own two hands adds to the overall tastiness.  

So, I’m still mulling over this wonder of how my ordinary, many days too-frustrating-even-to-write-about life can suddenly seem so romantic and beautiful when I see it on a screen, all nicely woven out of snapshots and paragraphs of words strung like pearls on a string… Is there a way to be acutely, gratefully aware of this loveliness while I’m living it?

One of our mentors has this quote at the bottom of his emails:

When you are worried about the future, it's hard to find God.   

When you are living in the moment, he's right there with you.  

~  Ed Dobson

I have to admit, I worry about the future a lot.  At the moment, I worry about this baby we’re having, about unplugging from here and saying goodbye for 5 months, about what visa we’ll return on, about relationships both here and there… 

Ed Dobson’s words remind me of how Ann is teaching us to give thanks in every moment, for every moment, and how remembering to give thanks brings awareness of the Holy right into the Now.  Wouldn’t there be that fragrance of wonder in more of my moments if I became intentionally aware of the Holy permeating the Now?  

Two cups of fresh pesto goes a long way.  I’m still savoring it (I’m the only one who really loves it!) dabbed on salads with leftover chicken, smeared on crackers with tomatoes and cheese, on pizza, on toast… the possibilities are endless.  And in writing this post, seeing the making-of-pesto looking so earthy and satisfying on the page, I’ve become aware again of the wonder that I’m actually writing about my life.  

Now if I could just remember that in those moments when this very same wondrous life feels so hard and heavy, and joy seems so impossible to find…  

This is my life, and in each moment God IS.  

******

Have you had a wondrous moment recently, where you took a step back and marveled that this was actually your life?  

What would it take to carry the wonder of that moment into all your other mundane, slogging-through-mud moments?