1. Baking bread in the oven makes the house smell so good.  I haven’t made a loaf of bread from scratch in years. Oh my. It tastes even better than it smells.

2. Giving up reading for Lent hasn’t been that hard. There are plenty of other things to do besides read books. I cleaned out the pantry closet. And watched lots of documentaries on Netflix.

3. I thought a lot about the word “essential”, which means “absolutely necessary, indispensible”. It comes from the word “essence”, which means “the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing”. I’m asking, “What do I absolutely need to be most real?”

4. Picking out knobs and handles for kitchen cupboards isn’t easy. Picking out knobs and handles for kitchen cupboards that both PB and I agree on is downright hard. We have ordered and returned and ordered and returned lots of hardware. I also learned about something called “restocking fees” — so, no more returning.

5. Sometimes you just have to move on.

6. We went to a wedding where the bride and groom washed each other’s feet during the ceremony. It was very moving, but it would never have worked with PB and me. He goes through the roof when anyone touches his feet.

7. I shouldn’t despise what I have the power to change. That pantry closet has been bothering me for months. I hated opening that door and seeing the chaos. Now I enjoy looking into that space.

8. I thought the concept of “preaching the gospel to yourself” was a new idea conceived by a contemporary, popular pastor in a hip, happening church out on the west coast.  Turns out, Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) came up with that amazing phrase.

9. Sometimes I don’t learn ten things.

10. But then, it was a short month.