I grabbed Sabrina Ward Harrison's The True and the Questions this morning for permission to delve into a time of reflection.  This week makes room for that as people take the rest of their vacation time and relax - or in our case, work on our homestead.

(Yes. More planter boxes are going in... stay tuned.)

As I paused from the morning routine, I ran across this prompt: "In the silence I understand..." So I went with it while embracing my own silence.  In the silence I understand that mystery is incomprehensible. I know that there is more I don't know than I do. I realize I shouldn't workout directly after eating. I understand that this year is coming to an end... and then I found my writing stride.

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My holiday meals have been described as "foo-foo."  Our brussel sprouts with blue cheese and bacon, two kinds of stuffing, a brined organic turkey.  The triumph was last year's Thanksgiving - making 13 dishes from scratch.  It was a far cry from Stoffer's stuffing and green bean casserole.

I don't say this to alienate, segregate, or manipulate.  We cook this way because first and foremost, I have a soy intollerence, and almost every preservative laden food has soy in it.  If I chose the convenient way, I would be sick almost every day. It's amazing how for so long I chose to live with a stomach ache thinking it was normal.  Secondly, the food made with our hands just tastes better.  As declared on Facebook last night - I'm obsessed with cauliflower.  I used to hate it, but people like Molly Wizenberg taught me how to caramelize it ... there is no going back to ranch dip and dried out veggie trays.

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The past two weeks have been filled with many memorable events.  It's been hard to find time to write and, even more so, show-up to what is (I plan on writing more on this topic soon).  Although this month has been packed, I did find a moment to move on to my new art journal.  I started art journaling in 2007 and just finished my first journal at the beginning of this month.

Sure there were a few pages left in it and the perfectionist in me thought for a hot second, "You need to go all the way to the end."  But then the recovery voice showed up and gently spoke, "Those pages can stay empty.  It's a new season; time to start the journal you've been staring at for five months."

This is the journal:

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Kristin Ritzau is a spiritual director, writer, speaker, and recovering perfectionist. When she's not working in Student Life at Azusa Pacific University, Kristin tends to her urban homestead outside Los Angeles, where she raises vegetables and chickens with her husband.

In her debut book, A Beautiful Mess, Kristin shares her very personal journey to overcome crippling perfectionism. As she navigated a new marriage, endured a quarter-life health crisis, and was forced to redefine the God of her childhood, Kristin discovered freedom in accepting she was a beautiful mess. She didn't need to clean up her "perfect" life any longer.

Kristin answered 5 Questions posed to her by the editors of ConversantLife.com.

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Kristin Ritzau, author of the new book, A Beautiful Mess, sat down with Cissy Brady-Rogers, a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, to talk about the important themes and outcomes of her book. A Beaufiful Mess is getting attention from key influencers like Dr. John Trent, who says: "Read this book! It is a life-changing look at the unavoidable forces that create unrealistic expectations and perfectionism, and at an even more powerful path towards freedom and the joy-in-life you've been longing for."

"A Beautiful Mess" by Kristin Ritzau from ConversantLife on