Something New is Coming! {Salt and Light is being re-released}

Well. Hello Again.

Spring came to the cul-de-sac the way it always does…loud and unbothered, pollen on every surface, the grandkids back on their bikes, the occasional rap (or mariachi) music drifting up from two blocks over like a blessing nobody asked for.

And here I am, in the middle of all of it. As per usual.

So. What have I been up to? Let me give you the honest version.

I have been painting. I have been writing. I have been sitting on my front porch watching the world go by and calling it spiritual formation, which (before you laugh) it actually is. Beauty is a practice. I’ve always said that. What I didn’t tell you is how relentless the practice has to become when life is full and loud and wonderful and a little exhausting all at once.

My twin daughters live next door. Did I tell you that? You knew that, right?

Next door. Which means three of the grandchildren are regularly in and out of my life like a sweet, semi-chaotic tide. Our oldest grandson is now 15, and an avid drummer. Who practices. Like…daily. (Yes, I can hear alllll of it.)

Tim is pastoring. I’ve been speaking - women’s events and conferences - and making things and doing the work of staying present to my one-and-only life in Knoxville, Tennessee, where the smoke shop is two blocks away and the front porch vibrates with all the motorcycles we now own here in the culdesac.

And, well, the whole neighborhood is basically a sermon I didn’t plan.

I’m also in the middle of something that has been a long time coming.

My very first book, Salt and Light is coming back!

This time, under my own roof. My own website. My own terms. It is not a reprint. It is a revised and beautifully expanded re-release - and there is a difference. “Salt and Light” was first written as a brief devotional to inspire you, as a disciple of Jesus, to “impact the world, right where you are”.

I originally wrote Salt and Light about ten years ago, as a woman who was just beginning to understand what it meant to be a maker, a keeper, a nurturer of small things that carry great weight. I’m re-releasing it as a woman who has lived that out in many more rooms, in many more contexts, and on every canvas in every hard season, and I can tell you: the thesis holds.

Ten years later, it all holds up better than ever.

You are salt. You are light. That is not metaphor. That is commission.

More details soon. For now, just know it’s coming. And it will, I hope and believe, be worth the wait.

Stay in the middle with me.

— Sheila