An email on a Tuesday

I don't know if any words can express how much I love the store anthropologie. It's probably a good thing that there isn't one in my nieghborhood or I would spend way too much money.

Last week on the way to an appointment downtown, I was walking by their new location on Chicago Ave and like a small child I found myself peering through the window at their big sale table in the front of the store. I walked by slowly convincing myself that I didn't have time to go in, but then quickly turned around because I had at least five minutes to spare. So I turned around and walked through their enormously large wooden front doors. It's heavenly. My senses are always awakened when I walk in. The capri blue candles that are lit all over the store tickle my nose. The fun ruffles, corduroys, wools all of them whispering for me to come touch them and feel how soft they are. Oh the sounds, the sounds of One Fine Frenzy, Ingrid Michaelson, or Martin Sexton playing overhead -- always deightful. And the sights, my goodness, I've never been somewhere so visually pleasing.

It's magical, really. Maybe even miraculous.

So when I got my weekly email from Anthropologie today with the subject line of {{{ outfits more than the sum of their parts }}} I smiled. I smiled because that is the exact way Frederick Buechner describes a miracle in The Alphabet of Grace. I recently finished reading this book (that was originally a lecture series he gave at Harvard years and years ago). One of the greatest things, I thought, was the way Buechner speaks of miracles -- because how can one begin to define them? And this is one of the lines I jotted down as I was reading: [a miracle] is when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts....when one plus one equals one thousand.

Wanna know something else that's a miracle?

This little guy.

We welcomed Chandler Edward to the world last week and I was so privileged to witness it and capture it in a way that will help his mom and dad (and everyone else) to remember how special that day was.

It's also a miracle that there's yet another little one growing inside my oldest sister and we so look forward to welcoming him/her into the world in June.