There are some places that seem to hold a feeling for you, so that when you return, something in you settles before you even understand why. Marysville is like that for me. This summer, on one of those fierce Australian days when the heat feels almost solid, we found ourselves drawn again to the mountain…
Tag: reflection
The Speed of Change
There are seasons in life when almost nothing seems to change. Days follow one another so faithfully they begin to blur. Morning arrives, evening settles, and tomorrow looks much like today. Life moves along its tracks with a reassuring rhythm. Predictable. Familiar. Safe. In those seasons, change is so subtle it can almost go unnoticed….
Echoed Dreams
She talks about her dreams as if they are already beginning to take shape — a life imagined in bright strokes, full of meaning and promise. There is certainty in her voice, the kind that doesn’t yet know how easily the world can complicate things. I listen, and I am taken back. I remember dreaming…
My Treasure Chest
When I look back, it isn’t the big moments that rise first. It’s the small hands. The weight of a child asleep against my chest. The way time softens when you are watching someone you love grow. Life keeps bringing them to me — first as babies, then as children, then, almost without warning, as…
Allow
There was a time when I believed life moved in straight lines. If I made careful plans, if I worked hard enough, if I loved well enough, things would unfold as expected. I thought certainty was something you earned. But life, it turns out, has never been interested in our neat expectations. It bends. It…
Stay, I Pray You
Last night I went to the theatre to see a live production of Anastasia, and from the moment it began, I felt myself being drawn into it completely. The costumes were exquisite, the music beautiful, the whole production tender and deeply moving. It was one of those rare performances where everything seemed to work together…
Between Breaths
New Year’s Eve is the night when time asks us to look back. Not with nostalgia, but with honesty. It is not a celebration so much as a reckoning — an inventory of moments that never asked to be remembered but stayed anyway. The conversations that altered us. The silences that taught us more than…
Quiet Reflection
When I was younger, the days between Christmas and New Year felt almost sacred. A quiet pause in the calendar where I would reflect on what had been and carefully map out what was to come. Lists were written, intentions set, dreams neatly arranged as though life itself might follow my handwriting. I still return…
Forever in My Heart
On your day of independence, my beautiful Finland, my heart always returns to you. It returns with pride, but also with tenderness. Because freedom is never just a word when you know what it cost. It is never only celebration when so much was endured for it. Your independence was paid for in courage, in…
The Beauty of Advent
There is something about Advent that reaches into me very deeply. Every year, when it comes around again, I feel it before I can properly explain it. It comes quietly, like a soft stillness settling over my soul, like the first pale light of morning slipping through the dark. And in that quietness, I feel…
Apples of Gold 