Did you know the chorus frogs stop singing by two in the morning? They do. We listened last night. They chant and shake the silence out of our mountain every pinky dusk but when the dark comes it seems they hush.

One child was sick and coughed the other one awake last night. She snuck upstairs with me. We watched the clouds slip across the nearly full moon. I asked her how she would explain it to someone who was blind. She told me it was like a piece of silk falling off of a light bulb. Yes.

The child has perfectly round cheeks have you noticed? And just now, when you kiss her, you can cover the whole thing. My lips were built to kiss her face. My darling.

This time of year, our mallards return. They move from the small collections of water around our place. From one side of the road to the other. Always just the two of them.

There is a pair of crows that sit atop the dead tree by the mailbox. They are the sentinels waiting to call the others when there is something rotting…or it is garbage day. They always seem to know when the trash is out. There is a great grey owl who hunts from our fencepost.

They are all home here too.

We had record-breaking heat this week and then rain fell and we know what our mountain smells like now when she breathes a sigh of relief.

Emily drew a picture of our house and it is so Suessical the way that house is perched so precariously on a mountain top. How every house was perched on its own magic hill. I can’t help thinking about it constantly. It is the perfect metaphor for the life we are building…the fine balance of building a home that shapes them, but of also blowing open the doors of our life to pour out our blessings. To know and remember that all of it is gift. And all of it…all of us…meant to be poured out again and again.

What are the ways that the home we make is shaping their hearts? How am I teaching them to yearn for Holy Wholeness…To break for all the broken?