Spend Yourself {Day 2} :: How do you spend your days

How do you spend your days?

We're talking about what is means to Spend Yourself this month. For 31 days in October, yes every single day, we are talking about living outward. Looking up and around and maybe getting out of our own way so we can possibly make a new way. What does it look like to live out this life in an intentional, active, real way? To give when we would rather save, go when we would rather stay, do when we would rather contemplate? How do we not miss the moments? How do we really see people? How do we use these hours and minutes and days that are precious and going by? Always going by.    

If you didn't stop in yesterday, I hope you will scroll down and keep reading for your official invitation to join us. If it all feels a little vague so far....well, that's because it is. It's all in my head, friends. And I have 31 days to get it to you.

This is not a month about doing more. That thought exhausts me. 

But perhaps it's about doing, and even thinking, a little differently. I have left the topic broad on purpose...because I think there is a lot here.

Right now I am on vacation in one of my favorite places ever. Each year we pack up the family and drive all night with blurry eyes and too much coffee. We drive up mountains and look for familiar sights, faces.
We embrace dear friends and within minutes all is right and it feels as if we never left them this time last year.
The only giveaway ... all of our little people are inches taller and a lot more chatty.

When we are in this place with its color and its history, we go full speed ahead: trains and farms and cinnamon donuts and waterfalls and porch nights overlooking the Hudson river. We hike and play and run and we drive into that bustling city. We go to the zoo and the toy store. We play hard here and we feel tired.

And these are the days when I crash into the pillow with a smile and a sigh from a deep, good place- like the world was mine and ours and what didn't we do? And these are the days when sleep comes fast and hard and sound and my muscles are a little bit sore ... because I used ones I had forgotten were there. And there is this knowing that life is really good.

Life feels a little more ... like life. Even though I am dog tired.

And so I am here, hours away and thinking about you-- thinking about what it means to spend a life.
And I am spent.

I am tired and my kids are tired and our belongings are scattered around this place like leaves in the wind. And I'm never sure how we will all recuperate from all of this activity. But we always do and we get back to routine. In the end, life is always a little richer and a little more full.

And it makes me wonder if living spent just might be the way to the full life...