You can find Christie at her website or on Instagram. Her latest book, A Home in Bloom can be found on Amazon and other booksellers.

Follow Gabi on Instagram.

[00:00] Gabi: You're listening to the Everyday Placemaker Podcast. This is a show where we talk about the cultivation of a life giving home for ourselves and those the Lord has called us to steward. Grab a cup of tea and join me at the kitchen table where we have real conversations about homeschooling, homemaking, motherhood, and living seasonally. I hope you'll be encouraged to grow deep, deep roots into place so you can plant, tend, and harvest right where the Lord has you. Let's get started. Well, hey there, friends. Thanks for coming back for another episode of the Everyday Placemaker Podcast. You are in for just the loveliest gift today. I'm so excited to share this episode with you. I am talking with writer and author and placemaker Christy Purifoy today, and we're talking about the release of her brand new book. But before I get to that, I want to give you a little bit of introduction as to how I came across Christy and Christie's work. So at the time of this recording, my husband passed away from brain cancer a little over two years ago. And after we had we had just moved into this house that I'm currently recording this episode in. I'd been here maybe about three months when he passed away, and I remember feeling so lost as to what I was supposed to do next. I'd lost my husband. We had just made a major life change, moved into a different city, didn't really know I didn't even know which way was up right. I just was consumed with grief. And I believe that the Lord brings books to us. Books kind of cross our path at the right time. And Christie's book placemaker came to me not long after my husband passed away. And it really gave me a heart and mind perspective that I never expected. It was just this gentle gift to me from the Lord to entrench deep roots into the place where he had placed me, where the Lord had placed me in that season. And I'm still in this house and have slowly, over time, made it my own home instead of the home that my husband and I shared together, because he just wasn't here for very long. He was in and out of hospitals during those three months anyway. But not only that, it just allowed me to put deep roots into the community and to invest in my neighbors and the people around me and ultimately find rest and peace in this place, however long I am to be here. And so that's kind of how I came across Christie's work. Her work, her writing, her message just truly blessed me deeply in that season of grief and lament. So, of course, what do I do? I start exploring all of her work and all of her writing. And it was so grateful to be part of her launch team for her newest book, which I will share with you a little bit about in this episode as well, but she so graciously accepted my invitation, and so I can't wait to get this episode into your hands. Let's get started. Christy, thank you so much for coming onto the show. I have to tell my listeners I have been in awe of Christie's work for some time. As one writer to another, we always are looking for inspiration and encouragement, and I have found so much life in Christie's work. And so, Christie, thank you for taking some time and coming on the show with me.

[03:45] Christie: Oh, wow. Thank you so much. It's an honor. It's a privilege to be here. I'm excited for our conversation, and I resonate with that. We are all looking. We can't create without community, and we find it in our face to face community, but we find it as we read books, as we listen to podcasts. And so it means a lot to me that the creativity I've shared with the world met you in a time of need and has inspired you. So I'm excited to connect here today.

[04:10] Gabi: Thank you. Well, let me share that little bit of a backstory that Christie and I talked about before I hit record. So many of you know that my husband passed away two years, almost two years ago at the time of this recording in June of 21 now. And he passed away from a three and a half year struggle with brain cancer, and we treated it holistically. I've talked a little bit about it on the podcast and in my blog, but Christie's work came. I believe that the Lord books find us, and Christie's book found me. And I had read some of her previous work, and it's interesting because it'll resonate with you, but then there are others for every season, there is something that is marked for you. A placemaker came into my life at that time. I don't know, I just happened to cross it, and I thought, oh, well, let me explore her again. I read her some time ago, and it allowed me to look for it was an invitation for me to cultivate loveliness, even in sorrow and even in lament. And so, yeah, Christy, your words have impacted my heart and my mind and encouraged me and moved me towards creating more loveliness in my place.

[05:19] Christie: So glad to hear that. Thank you.

[05:21] Gabi: I want to talk about your new book, though. I want to talk about all kinds of things back up and have you introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about you, where you are and what you do.

[05:33] Christie: Right. Well, as we discovered here before we hit record, we are both Texans, so I did grow up in Texas, but I now am making a home in Pennsylvania, southeastern corner, not too far from Philadelphia. About ten years ago, my husband and I and our four children moved to this old Victorian farmhouse. It came with a name. It's called maplehurst. And we came with big dreams and big plans and mostly just gratitude that we had been given a place to care for. And now, as I look back after ten years and I see the fruitfulness of this place, I am filled with even more gratitude. So, yes, I think of myself as a placemaker first and then as a writer, an author. I guess maybe writers, artists have different we talk about a muse, someone or something that inspires. And it is interesting to me that this place, this house has, for my writing, become that muse, that inspiration. And so, really, all of my books, no matter what they're about or the form they take, they are rooted in this place, this house, this community, and the life that we've been cultivating here. And so that was true of placemaker. Absolutely. And it's true of the most recent book, A Home in Bloom, which is different from placemaker. It looks very different, but it shares with placemaker the roots in an actual place called Maplehurst in Pennsylvania.

[06:56] Gabi: I love that. Well, let's talk about your journey, because in your books, in Garden Maker, in your other work, essentially, you've traversed through various places, not just from Texas, but remind me, was it Chicago as well?

[07:08] Christie: It was, right?

[07:10] Gabi: So tell me a little bit about were you always called or how did you know? Did you know rather from an earlier age, maybe even before children, before marriage, before that chapter? What was your relationship to nesting, to rooting, to establishing and creating place?

[07:28] Christie: Yeah, it's funny. I write about staying put. I write about living a rooted life. But I think I do that because I lived for many years searching for home, searching for a place that would receive my roots. So when I was young, I loved home. I was inspired by home. I'll just say my favorite toy was the doll house that my father made for me and my sister. So that was always there. But I was young, and like many young people, I was searching. I wanted to leave home, I wanted to explore. Not exactly adventure, but I had really, from when I was a young woman, a desire to live in a big city, to just live in places that were different from the Texas I had grown up in. And so I did that. My husband and I got married young. We left Texas, and we lived in quite a few places. But I can look back now and see that in each of those places I was trying to find, I won't say the place, because my book, Placemaker, is about the way that we can make home even as we move. We can put down roots even as we move. But I was looking for a place where I could live a rooted life. And I have learned that that isn't possible in every season. It's not possible in every place. Sometimes we find ourselves in shallow soil. And the mercy there is that it keeps us searching, it keeps us moving, it keeps us seeking God's will. And so I felt that in certain places like this is shallow soil, but in that experience, it would cause me to ask questions, I would learn things about myself. And so then when I arrived in the next place, I had new understanding. I had dreams that had become more clear. And so I really feel that in my adult life I have felt at home in two places. And it'll seem strange, I think, because they're so different, but I felt deeply at home in Chicago, on the South Side, in our neighborhood that was so full of trees, it was on the lake, it's full of beautiful old homes. The community there was rich. The people challenged me and I grew there and we started our family there. My first three kids were born there. And I still feel so connected to that city. And now I have felt at home these ten years here in this more country place, a very different pace of life, way of life, a life I didn't exactly go seeking. And yet at the same time, it is the desire of my own heart. It is the answer to the questions I was asking. It is a great gift, but a gift I didn't even know to ask for for many years. And so I think in that is such of the beauty and mystery of life, the way that we really are following a God who knows us better than we know ourselves. And so we can trust this God with our whole lives. And life is still life. Life is still hard, life still brings sorrow and hard things. Life is still always this passing away and this letting go. And yet mostly these days I'm just overwhelmed with all that's been given to me. And that's what I bring to these books. I look closely at my own life, I look closely at my own place in order to inspire others to give that kind of attention and care to their own lives and their own places. And I'm glad that you found my book, that it connected.

[10:44] Gabi: And we're only five minutes.

[10:47] Christie: I don't know how that ends up happening.

[10:49] Gabi: Well, it ends up happening when a message resonates with your heart and mind and even soul I love. So two things I wanted to touch about, touch on that you mentioned there, you talked about shallow soil. So I have a question for you there and then an answer to the questions you didn't even know you had. I loved that. But let me back up to shallow soil. Tell me what shallow soil is for you, was for you. And let's say a mom finds herself in shallow soil and yet she deeply has this desire, doesn't really know what it is exactly to be able to establish place and home and root and create this nest that will allow her not just to flourish, but her family as well. But let's talk about tell me a little bit about shallow soil to find yeah.

[11:35] Christie: And another metaphor I'll add to that that might be more familiar to some of your listeners that I think is related is the metaphor that comes from scripture about the wilderness or the wandering. So for me, shallow soil is often a wilderness place. But here's the wild thing. It's not wholly bad. It can be full of pain and discomfort, but often it's the kind of discomfort that just keeps us absolutely relying on God. And here's the crazy thing, it can also be a restful place. So for me, and I tell this story in placemaker, when we left Chicago and we left that place where we had felt so rooted, we ended up in Florida temporarily. And that place, as beautiful as it was, and it was beautiful with the beaches and the palm trees and the warm weather, that was shallow soil for me. Because no matter what attempts we made to connect with others, to root ourselves in the ways that had always worked in the past, to form community, to build relationships, to just to sink into the soil of that place, it just felt like we couldn't do it. Every effort was just not happening. And so I was very lonely. And yet a lot of the things that I had kept, that had kept me busy in my life in Chicago, relationships and hosting and welcoming people into my home, that wasn't happening in Florida. And it meant I had a lot of time to be with my family, to be with myself, to say, well, what do I want if my usual ways of living aren't happening here? What do I want my life to look like if this isn't the place where I'm going to stay, where do I want to go next? And so it became that place of shallow soil. That wilderness place was a place of ache and some pain and some loss, but it was also a restful space to let go of Chicago, to let go of that former life, to step out of my busyness, to be with my family and to start dreaming and to start imagining. And so the gift of shallow soil is that we're not so busy rooting ourselves, we're not working, we're not spinning our wheels, we're just being.

[13:55] Gabi: As women, as mothers.

[13:56] Christie: Exactly. And good things can come out of that. And so by the time we left Florida, I had a much clearer sense of my dreams, my hopes, my husband and I had more of a shared vision. And so when we came to Pennsylvania, when we came to Mabelhurst, it was with some sense of what we were wanting to attempt and the things that we're aiming for. And of course, we never know exactly. So, so much of what I thought it would look like. Now I can look back and say it's very different. And yet the dream has been fulfilled, even if it looks differently than I first imagined it would.

[14:34] Gabi: Florida. Christie, did you know you were in shallow soil? Because here what I heard was tell us some of the practices or some of the rhythms that you were trying to establish with creating tension for you in Florida. How does a mom know or how does a woman know she's in shallow soil? Because I don't know. Did you know it was going to be a temporary relocation? At the time, we didn't.

[14:57] Christie: We knew that was possible. But even with that temporary relocation, we knew that if we found ourselves rooted in that place, that maybe we could choose to stay. So we went to Florida. Not sure, but with sort of openness to the place and the people. But we would reach out. We would try to do our normal, like host a church, small group or have friends over. And it just felt like there was no space for us in that community, that we were just sort of on the surface of things. And the fact is, I spent a lot of time in the first year there wondering if I was failing, wondering if I was the problem, wondering if I was dealing with some discontent, if there was something I was doing wrong or badly, or if there was some sin. And God really, in his mercy, intervened in quite a dramatic, specific way. And while I haven't often experienced things like this, I think sometimes when we're in an intense place or a real season of transition, god will sometimes just step in and give us a clear sense of direction. And so one day, I was at church. It was an evening church service, and I can't even remember how exactly, but there was a sort of pause in the service and a young woman sitting in front of me, who I did not know, but she was very involved in that church, and she was a woman of prayer. She turned around to me at a certain point in the service and said, this might sound crazy, but sitting here just met you, and I feel like God wants you to know that he walked with you into the wilderness, and he will walk with you out again. Isn't that wild? Yes.

[16:40] Gabi: At the same time, right?

[16:42] Christie: Yes, it is.

[16:43] Gabi: Knowing who the Lord is historically with.

[16:46] Christie: His people, you're like, who am I? But in the end, it was so deeply encouraging because I could let go of my self focus and I could just receive what was happening. I could know, okay, this isn't something I've created or something I'm doing wrong. This is just where I am. And now I have a name for the place, whether I call it shallow soil or wilderness, I have a name for this place. And I have stories in Scripture that can give me wisdom for what it might mean to be in this place. And I also have hope, hope that it will not always be here. And I think that's the main thing, whether we're in a place of grief or sorrow or loss or change, we know because we know who God is, and we know what Scripture shows us, that that is not ever where the story ends. It's not ever where the story ends. That is always just a point on the journey, a moment in the story. And so when our hearts might tempt us to despair by saying, this is how it's always going to be, we can say with confidence it will not always be like this. Whether in the land of the living or some future, the story does not end here. This is not the end. And it wasn't the end. It was a crucial needed transition time for me in order for and for my husband, for both of us to sort of reorient ourselves, in order to be prepared for what was next. And mercifully, it only lasted two years, so not always, I imagine.

[18:17] Gabi: What advice would you give then? Let's say I find myself shallow, soil, and I did at one point in time, and I don't know that I would call mine shallow at the time, right after my husband was passing. It was a wilderness. And maybe it's the same thing. I didn't know which way, which direct. Do I take the house. Do I move? Do I do this? And the idea of standing still as this creative visionary, I want to go do the things, was so hard. Christie and what advice would you give to a mom that finds yourself in this place where there isn't knowledge of permanence, but there isn't a rejection of it either. You're just in it. And so how do you go about encouraging your soul to hope?

[19:02] Christie: And actually, I think you hit the nail on the head right there when you said that. For a creative person, which, let's be clear, we all are, some more vocationally than others, but we are all made in the image of a creator, which means we are made to dream, imagine, create, cultivate, tend like that's what we're made to do. Yeah. And so when we find ourselves in a place where that is just not working or not possible, or we're thwarted or we don't have whatever the resources or the time or whatever is happening, that means that we cannot continue in our active creative ways. First of all, yes, that's very hard. But I think I just would want to emphasize the goodness of it, the mercy of it, and that it can be a kind of rest. Not always comfortable, not always easy, maybe not pleasant, depending on what has led us there, but it can be a kind of rest. And I think about the stories we get in Genesis of God creating the world. And I've been reminded recently as a creative person who can tend to just go, go chase every new idea to the point of overwhelm and over commitment. I've been encouraged to remember that the God who created the world could have gone on creating. I mean, God is an endless fount of good ideas and he could have just gone on and on and on. Instead, he looked at what he had made and he said, this is good. And then he stopped creating. He got arrested. And if God would choose that, then who am I to not choose that and not receive that? And sometimes we pursue it and sometimes it just comes to us. And so that wilderness time, that time of not being able to put down deep roots was restful. It meant that I could stop chasing every idea. I wasn't being asked to chase every idea. I was just being asked to sit still, to be with the Lord. To waiting. The waiting is hard.

[21:07] Gabi: I love that you said essentially to stop chasing every deal. I was given permission, essentially. Mostly because I guess even for me, the Lord has to put up those.

[21:16] Christie: Boundaries and say, because I will continue, Christy, to keep pushing it.

[21:21] Gabi: And why is this not working? And I haven't done this. I'm going to go pursue this. But I love that it was almost this defined boundary for you and now that gave you permission. There's no other alternative but to rest and to be in it.

[21:34] Christie: Yeah. And maybe this is where the conversation is taking us. And especially as I think about this new book, A Home in Bloom, is that as we're making places, tending places, there's this other sort of plane that crosses place, which is time, which is seasons. So to tend a place, even if you're not moving around, even if you have been in the same community, the same town, the same home your whole life, and you're going to stay there, there is still the change in the transition that comes with seasons, with time. And we have to take that into account. And so tending our place or living a rooted life or caring for our families isn't a static thing. It is a changing thing, the way a garden is changing and always moving through its growth and its seasons. And that's true whether or not we're gardeners. That's true if we're just keeping a home or we're raising children or teaching children, that element of time is important to consider and it puts down certain boundaries. It means that sometimes we're in winter, we're not in summer. And we need to acknowledge that. So winter is another metaphor. Yeah. Also a time of rest, but not always a pleasant one. So yeah, to consider kind of where we are in time, even if the place is still the same, it's not. Our home in winter is not our home in summer. And so we we have different responsibilities and different roles and and ways of keeping home in different seasons a call.

[23:07] Gabi: To live seasonally, essentially.

[23:08] Christie: Yeah, I love that.

[23:10] Gabi: Let me go to the other point that you made about being the answer to Maple Hearst, being the answer to the questions you didn't even know you had. I love that. That alone sounds so poetic, so ethereal, almost. Tell us a little bit. How do you because I think we all, because we're made in the image of God, have this yearning. We know that all of creation groans to be in right standing with the Lord. Like, we experience the tension of wanting to be ancient in our youth. Again, there's a line from an Andrew Peterson song. But if you feel that tension, how do you know what the questions are? And how do you know when the answer is coming to the question that you didn't even know you had?

[23:54] Christie: So much in that I know however you want. Yeah. I'll begin to step into an answer by talking as a writer. So you're also a writer. That's one way we exercise our creativity. And so, as a writer, I have learned through these book projects to let my questions lead me, which is a scary thing to do as a writer. So maybe once I follow this metaphor, we'll see if that's true also just in living. But it's true as a writer because it means that I can plan a book, I can put out a proposal, I can outline what I think the chapters are. But if I am letting deep questions lead me in the writing, it means that at the end of the day, I don't really know where I'm headed in this book, and I don't really know where I will land at the end of the manuscript. I hope I will land at some answers. I hope I will land at something solid to hand a reader. But there's no guarantee because I am not writing out what I already know. I am following questions.

[25:02] Gabi: I love that.

[25:03] Christie: And it's been a frightening yet exciting way to write because it means that I'm never bored as I write, because I'm actually asking the questions that I feel deeply and that I want wisdom and answer something. So it is an exciting way to work, I think, if that's how I operate as a writer, I do think I want to say it's a good way to live. I think if we talk about following our maker, following Jesus, if that's what our lives as Christians are about, asking questions, I think looks like seeking, it looks like moving, it looks like saying, I'm not going to just stay where I am. But questions can frighten us because we don't know where they will take us. There's a lot of trust, I think, that we have to feel with our maker in order to let our questions lead us. So as a writer, I have just put that on the table and said, okay, Lord, I'm going to do this. I'm going to ask these questions, and I'm just trusting that you'll leave me somewhere in the writing. But I think the same is true for living.

[26:18] Gabi: What if you're afraid to even ask the questions though, Christie? Like, some of us have been conditioned over years, right? I mean, you're in your mid 40s. I'm in my mid 40s. You're conditioned to believe that the reality that you see in front of you is it and to think outside of the box or to even operate as the creative designer that you were made to be is you mentioned. Scary, but sometimes you don't even know that you even have permission. That you don't yourself have been robbed of agency through life experiences, through the way that you've been schooled, through whatever the venue. How do you even know that you have permission to ask the questions? Because if you don't know you can ask the questions, then you don't even know to go seek for the answer. Where does that happen for you?

[27:03] Christie: And I can relate to that. That is, I think, by how I was raised, but also just my temperament. Naturally, I think that is how I am. I'm not a natural questioner. I tend to accept and always have what I'm taught, what I'm told, what others tell me. And so it hasn't been a natural tendency for me. So what it has looked like for me personally is just being led into hard places, places where I feel like I can't even see the next step. I feel like I'm up against a wall. There's no horizon line to reach toward. And so even for someone like me, who is not a natural questioner or seeker or mover, I'm someone who likes to just stay in my comfort zone. By the grace of God, I've been led to those places where I know, okay, I've got to start asking questions because where I am right now has no future. There's no forward here. When you feel closed in, in that way, the only thing to do is, I think, to turn to God and say, what is next? What is happening? What am I made for? What are you doing? And I think in the repeated experience of having our questions received with love and kindness, our God is so kind. That gives us courage to ask again and to be less and less afraid. I mean, it's one of the privileges of growing older, is having that experience to lean on. Yeah, but for younger women, younger moms, I absolutely relate to how difficult that can be. But if there are questions that you need to be asking, I think, too, you can trust that God will lead you to the book or the or the relationship. Often this happens in community as we connect with others and. We realize sometimes maybe it's someone else has been asking the questions, questions we didn't even know to ask. And then we get to sort of listen in and realize, oh, I guess I have that question too. Or I didn't even realize that question was so deep inside of me, but this experience or this book has drawn it out of me like deep water. And, yeah, I guess for anyone listening here right now, I would just say, yeah, don't be afraid of that. We can trust God with our questions.

[29:13] Gabi: What if you have questions and your husband doesn't have the same questions and your partner happens?

[29:19] Christie: Yeah.

[29:19] Gabi: How does that exist if you have this almost this knowing that there is something other than the guardrails that you're currently operating within? How does that work?

[29:34] Christie: Yeah, great question. I'm someone who married very young. My husband and I met in our high school youth group, actually, and got married while we were still in college. And I want to say it's two ways. On the one hand, I feel it's all been just grace, that we have grown and changed together, that we have, by the grace of God, moved together in new directions and new places. I don't take credit for that, and I don't think he would either. It feels to me like just a pure gift. On the other hand, I think when we came to moments of transition or moments of decision making, we did try to honor that boundary that marriage had placed on us, that we had committed to do things together, we had committed to support one another. And so the marriage itself became a boundary that led us in certain directions. So even what I was sharing earlier about moving to Florida, we made that move because of my husband's job, which we had made our previous move to Chicago because of my graduate work. So in moving to Florida, it wasn't that I personally wanted to go there or even saw a future there, but it was time in our relationship to move in the direction that he needed. And the wild thing is that even though I made that choice to go because of my husband, because of the partnership, because of the commitment, god met me in Florida. God changed me there. Right. So God I think when we honor those boundaries that are good, and my marriage has been a good boundary, I accept that marriage can look different for different people, and it might not be a good boundary in everyone's life, but it has been a good boundary in mine. And in honoring that, we aren't limiting what God can do. We're just showing up to what God wants to do. I think that's beautiful.

[31:27] Gabi: Tell me how Mabelhurst, then, has been the answer to the things you didn't even know.

[31:32] Christie: Yeah. Sometimes I sit in this old house and it is not I'll just briefly describe it.

[31:38] Gabi: Here I am.

[31:39] Christie: I'm up on this third floor of this old brick farmhouse. It is not a mansion. It's not a fancy place built in 1880 by Pennsylvania Quakers. It's a sort of plain Victorian house, very solid and cared for, but also old and always sort of falling apart around the edges.

[31:59] Gabi: You mentioned that, and you're right.

[32:00] Christie: Oh, yeah.

[32:02] Gabi: Embodied its own persona in your work. Maplehurst has its own identity.

[32:06] Christie: I love it. It has a lot of personality. It really does. And I'm in this house, but sometimes at night, I remember being a little girl with that doll house and how I would dream about my doll house at night or I would imagine moving the furniture around. And I realized I am a grown up woman living in my own little doll house. And I feel so grateful because the form that my creativity wants to take is often that nesting, that decorating, that puttering around, arranging. I mean, trust me, my house is I'm looking around, actually quite a mess. I mean, it is far from perfect. It is not magazine ready ever. Yeah. And yet I love that artistic side of keeping a house. I don't know. Thinking about that. I just think, how good is our God that he saw that little girl who loved her doll house and loved the idea of keeping a house and had that kind of creative bent. And he gave me a house that would the word a house that could be cared for in that way. Some houses, and I think this is wonderful even as we talk about place, there are some who are called to be placemakers in ways where they just need a house that is absolutely functional, needs no repair. It's just there to serve them so that they can get out and do the work of place making that they're called to do. It might be in their community or it might look a little different than it does for me. And God could have brought me to a house like that, but instead he brought me to this old, slightly shabby home in need of lots of love. But I was someone who had lots of love to give to a house. And so that match, that meeting, just fills me with gratitude.

[33:59] Gabi: I love that you brought that up, too. That we can make place regardless of the calling that the Lord has placed.

[34:05] Christie: On it, whether the Lord has told.

[34:07] Gabi: Us to cultivate here or cultivate out there. But the place that itself, we can still root and do love that. I'm very much like you in that sense, Christie. Like, I could design a little vignette on a bookshelf for it. And always flowers. Always flowers. But there has been, since my husband passed away, almost this softening that I have felt in my life, where I'm always in linen, but I never had any print, never had any on my clothing. And now I'm drawn to beautiful flowery journals and things that and here I.

[34:42] Christie: Am in my mid 40s.

[34:45] Gabi: What advice would you give? And tell us your perspective, and then tell us your advice on what if a woman doesn't even feel like she has the permission to move into her softness and to go gently with not just her place, but herself, what does that look like for you? And how does a mom how does a woman move into that?

[35:04] Christie: Yeah. On the one hand, I think time, if we let it I mean, it is possible to fight these things, but if we let it, time softened so much, I think, about who the kind of homemaker I was as a young wife. I did want things to be more perfect, more visually just right. And sometimes I sit down in our little front parlor, don't have exactly a coffee table, but we have a sort of ottoman that works as a coffee table. And sometimes I remember that when I was young, especially before I had kids, but even when my kids were young, I always had a perfect vignette on my coffee table, always. That was so important to me. And I will tell you, I never do any longer. Now, that's not to say that would be wrong for me to do, but it's just evidence of my own softening, which is just sort of a letting of my home be alive, which means be a bit of a mess, not fighting the tendency to decay. I think, actually, particularly, that's something an old house has done for me. And that's something four children have done for me. Yeah. So other lives will look different, but in mine, the slight chaos of four children means that I have softened in that way. And there's a goodness in that. It means that I can exercise my creativity. I can work toward a beautiful home. But when it isn't, that's also okay. It's okay.

[36:32] Gabi: Tell me about your latest work, then. Let's talk about if anyone is bought. This is beautiful. So anyone knows? I ordered this month before its actual release date, and I had the privilege of being on Christie's launch team and have gifted this book to three friends. And then we'll gift it to one more listener, I guess, and we'll do some promotion for it so that somebody else can get their hands on this beautiful book. But tell me about a home in Bloom.

[36:57] Christie: Yes, another book of my heart. So this is a special book because it's full of photographs from my own home. Not just my garden, but inside my home. Flowers. I've grown, my own wallpaper, and as I flip through old furniture with disgust, it's a book about my home. But really, in writing this, I wanted to try to communicate some of what gardening has been for me. Because I think in our culture here in the US. Gardening is just a hobby. It's something some people do, others don't. We talk about green thumbs or I'm someone who kills plants. But I wanted to cast a different vision, a vision that is rooted in Eden, that's rooted in who we were made to be in the beginning, which is caretakers for life. So when I talk about keeping a home and keeping a place, I'm not just talking about inanimate stuff or material goods. I'm talking about life. And so this is a book about letting our homes come to life, bringing the garden inside, or cultivating certain practices that are rooted in the seasons and rooted in nature. This is not a book about how to make perfect bouquets or how to do anything complicated, actually, because, frankly, I'm just in a place in life. I don't have that kind of time. Maybe one day I will. But if I'm going to cultivate life in my home, if I'm going to bring beauty inside, then it just needs to be a life giving rhythm rather than a list of to dos or a complicated project. So there are projects in this book, but they are the kinds of just simple, rhythmic, in season and out things that I have learned to do in this place. And it's almost there's even recipes where I would say, like, this isn't even a recipe. But sometimes we just need someone else to say, hey, here's something I do in the spring when the dandelions come up. I pick the petals and I make cupcakes with my daughter. Or here's something I do at Christmas. I go out and I cut some greenery and I bring it inside. We can need reminding that it can be that easy and that it's worth doing, even if and here's the rub, it does add some mess and some things to be swept. It adds some life, but it adds life. It adds life. Yeah.

[39:20] Gabi: What I love about that is that it's almost permission to and I think, as moms, we are always wanting to know, how can I do this better? How can I do this more efficiently? What is she doing? There is something almost intrinsically. Well, I wouldn't call it intrinsic. I think society has cultivated some of this almost voyeuristic. Right. We want to know what the next mom is doing. And then when you create something beautiful and the things that you've done here in this book, it's almost like, oh, well, I can do that. I can go out to the garden and do that. It's not hard. I don't have to spend a lot of money. Okay, I can do that. That's what I love about this. How can I bring life? And you call them rhythms. There are some of the ways that moms can bring rhythms of life into their home, into their place.

[40:05] Christie: Yeah, actually remembering when my kids were young and maybe I should pick some version of this up again, but when my kids were quite young, like preschool and early school age, we would often have something like a nature table somewhere in our home. Often like a sideboard near where we near the kitchen table, where seasonally we would bring bits of nature in. I mean, it would be little acorns or pebbles they found. And I would sort of curate that to reflect where we were in the year. Right. So I think some of it is just with our children, helping them pay attention, and it should be easy, but the way we live these days, it isn't necessarily. We do tend to live in ways that are divorced from time and divorced from the earth and divorced from even the weather or whatever. So just little practices that remind us, this is what's happening, this is where we are in the year, this is what's growing in our garden, or this is what we found at the park. And so that's something I did when they were young that maybe in my own way, I'm still doing. But I feel like I could do it even more ambitiously. I still have kids at home. I mean, they're teenagers now, mostly, but I could do that.

[41:22] Gabi: You have a quote, and it's not your quote in Garden Maker that has resumed. Let me see if I can find it.

[41:27] Christie: Yeah, I might remember it, too.

[41:29] Gabi: Liberty Hyde Bailey. Sooner or later, every person feels his desire to plant something. It is the return to Eden, the return to ourselves after the long estrangement of our artificial lives. I can't tell you how that I remember that quote. It stunned me. I thought, oh, have I been living an artificial? But you talked about a little bit. Everything tells us that. I think the habit of attention, and a lot of my listeners are Charlote Mason homeschoolers. I'm a Charlotte Mason, and she teaches very much the habit of attention. But even just paying attention in your daily life, not necessarily to all the extraneous things out there, is a hard practice because we have been trained, transitioned into this constant perpetual motion, where the soft things, the soft details and all of those make up the fabric of our lives, are just something to overlook. We got to keep moving. We got to keep going. Where's the attainment? Where's the work product? How can a mother pay attention for herself?

[42:35] Christie: Christy yeah, and you're reminding me of something that I was thinking about today. I think the thing that nature does for us and paying attention to it is that it invites us to return. So this artificial life that you're describing, which yes, man, I love that quote from every time. It's fantastic. I mean, the artificial life keeps us always moving forward, keeps us talking about goals focused on efficiency, productivity. It's so utilitarian. And time just marches forward. And what Eden, let's call it like the whispers of Eden that are still here in this good creation. What that invites us into is something more cyclical, something that repeats and returns. So even as I grow older and my children grow up so quickly, the daffodils here at Maplehurst return every spring. And so I'm different with each return, and yet they bring me back. They bring me back to something gosh, yeah, I could get emotional just talking about it. Something like I think it's TS elliot the poet talks about the still point of the turning world. I mean, as a Christian, I believe that that is Christ. So where do I see that? I see it in the daffodils every spring. I see it when the trees begin to turn again every autumn. Those are the rhythms here. They will look different in Magnolia, Texas. They will look different wherever you are. But paying attention to figure out what are they in my place, in my community, what birds are returning or, oh, the farmers market is here again. Whatever it is that I think helps root us so that we stop this perpetual rushing forward, but we keep coming back, coming back to ourselves, coming back to Christ, coming back to all that is good and beautiful in a way that we desperately need. Because if it is always just rushing forward, not only will we be exhausted, but we'll just miss so much of the yeah, what is it all for? What is it all for? Because it's not just the end. It's this life, this daily life that we're cultivating within time. Right? I feel like it's maybe it's about and maybe this is another thing I was aiming for in writing. A home in Bloom is how do we make a home in time? I think we do that by paying attention to the garden, paying attention to the seasons, so that this four season movement or this yearly movement or whatever it looks like in your place, becomes a space that we inhabit, that we care for, that returns, that is always changing but is always coming back to us and being returned to us. So in that way, time itself isn't just a line that moves forward, but becomes this circle that kind of holds.

[45:30] Gabi: Us and how beautiful the Lord placed us in the middle to cultivate that, right?

[45:34] Christie: Yeah.

[45:35] Gabi: What a privilege.

[45:36] Christie: Yeah, absolutely.

[45:38] Gabi: Christy, where can we find you? It has been my delight, thank you, to talk with you. Where can listeners find you? Absolutely.

[45:48] Christie: Well, let's see. I do show up in quite a few places, so if I have picked your curiosity about Maplehurst and you're on Instagram, you can find me there at Christypurafoi. I have a website, Christiepurafoi.com, where you could sign up for my Friday story letter. I send out a little email every Friday with stories about garden making and place making. And I have a podcast that comes out every Wednesday called out of the Ordinary with my dear longtime friend, Lisa Joe Baker. She's also an author and a writer, and we have been I think for five years now, telling stories every Wednesday about ordinary daily life, because we really do believe that that is the soil where great stories grow.

[46:31] Gabi: Christy, I could talk to you probably for another hour, and I would think so, yeah. But it's just because you bring things up that make me question something, right? My own questions have more searching, and I love that your work has for me, it's been like small little breadcrumbs that have created an awareness, an attention to detail, an opening, almost a returning, for me, anyway, of how I was created to be. But I've allowed the artificial life over the years to almost callous some of that softening. And so I am indebted to you for the messaging that you've put out into the world, for the work that the Lord has equipped you to write and to put out into the world because it's impacted my life. And I hope after this recording, my listeners will run out to your work and go get some life and breath breathed into them that will lead them not just to Christ, but to a renewing in that cyclical rhythm that we've been called to cultivate. And so, Christy, thank you very much for sharing space with me and for this time and for just what a beautiful awareness. Yeah. I don't know, I could talk to you for another hour.

[47:40] Christie: I feel the same. I'm so grateful. Thank you for taking the time to have this conversation. It's so good to be here.

[47:47] Gabi: Thank you, Christy. Thank you. Take care.