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I wasn't in a funk; just tired--having one of those moments when nothing is dramatic, things are fine, but the days just start feeling a little gray around the edges.

I had been hitting it hard, and by it, I mean life. It seems laughable to say for a person who writes at home in her pajamas two days a week, teaches in person one day and online another, and every other week or so records vodcasts on the other weekday, but I am busy. Too busy. Sometimes I look back on my former stay-at-home-mom self and think I would like to be a stay-at-home-mom now just to get stuff done, even though I don't have little kids any more.

Only one child still lives with me at home. The rest have left the nest. You'd think the nest would be more chill. And sometimes it is, I guess. But as much as I would like to be, and probably project it sometimes, I think it's me that's just not very chill. I have thought for some time about getting Psalm 46:10--"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth" tattooed on my wrist as a reminder to cease striving, trust in God's sovereignty during chaos or uncertainty, and acknowledge His ultimate power. I am a work in progress who never has been and maybe has gotten better at it, but remain not great at being chill. Which is to say, still.

So many people have asked me why I became obsessed with the Epstein files. The reason is the victims, because I want to bear witness to their suffering and aid others who also want to but are drowning in a sea of information like I am. But the deeper question probably is: Why do I get so obsessed? I have done it my whole life. Elvis, John F. Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Michael Jackson; music, books and writers and places, the Holocaust, politics, public schools, Jesus, baking bread, languages, "Outlander." Like my son Harper told me once when he was about 3 and I asked him how he got so handsome: It's just the way God made me.

Anyway, it was the weekend. I had been told enough already with the Epstein columns by my saintly editor, which I took as my cue to think about something else. But what? Tax money we are pouring down the black hole of private school vouchers? The fact the best candidate lost in my district again? Erika Kirk's visit to Arkansas? War? The price of gas and groceries? Cuba?

Daughter Grace tested positive for covid while she was at my house, which precluded a visit to Little Rock. Harper and Brooklin weren't coming home due to Harper's exile in the land of dental school test prep. While they languished in their lack of me, I did laundry, dishes, and excessive fur collection, otherwise known as the vacuuming of rugs and furniture till the receptacle had to be emptied from the machine before mostly golden retriever fuzz exploded out the top.

Kyle and Grace are building a house on the bluff by me--rapture!--and are at the stage of planting grass on the finally cleared and smoothed spot. So Adelaide, Stella, Typhoid Mary, and I walked over to help Kyle Sunday morning with the dispersion of the grass seeds. We filled five-gallon buckets and lugged them to our starting places. Then we began throwing out seed. Grace compared it to fairy dust. Adelaide said she felt like she was feeding invisible chickens. What I felt, as I watched them and flung my own handfuls, was that we were sowing seeds of the future. The joy of a home for Kyle and Grace, the wonder of this dream coming true, and the hope of us all being together forever. The vision we inherited from my parents and have always planned and worked toward.

I got a little dizzy and had to sit down before we were completely done. Mugsy, the self-appointed emotional support animal, came to join me. I drank deep from my water bottle and watched the kids finish off the last sack of seed. I felt so good. Happy. Satisfied. I thought about how grounding it is to go outside, do something with your hands, help someone who needs it. And for the millionth time I was reminded how it is an act of resistance, against the gray edges as well as incomprehensible evils, simply to show up.

Wendell Berry wrote this, in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War:

In the dark of the moon,

in the dead of winter,

I walk the rocky hillside, sowing clover.

You never know what a little seed might do in time. Like Mr. Berry, we keep sowing.

Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is an author, teacher, and award-winning columnist from Ozark. Email her at gfaulkenberry@hotmail.com. Watch her vodcast here: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/podcast/smalltowngirl/

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