Spilling The Soup

I've been scheming a new project for you and it's finally time to share!

My friends!

How are you doing? IT HAS BEEN A MONTH (or two.) I’ve got some serious emotional whiplash, and I know I’m not alone. I wish I could look you in the eye and ask how you’re holding up. Please know that you’re close to my heart, and I’m praying for all of us.

Aside from simply checking in, I’m popping over to share something brand new with you. (As always, you’re the first to hear. Because you’re my favorites.)

Several months ago a match was lit inside me. The heat was familiar, taking me back to my earliest days of blogging, when I was known more as Flower Patch Farmgirl than Shannan. (Some of you remember!)

I began brainstorming, taking my time and scribbling notes into the little notebook that lives on my bedside table. I dreamed up a semi-secret journal of sorts where I’ll honor the dust of daily life by holding it up to the light.

Moving forward, my regular, monthly emails (like this one!) will continue. But I’ll also be offering a new little side-project named The Soup. This was born from a place of remembering who I truly am, the many layers of a full life. As always, I want to talk about all of them. Sometimes, I even want to go a little overboard on the daily/lifey stuff, but I’ve discovered that somewhere along the way, I started censoring some of that.

Enter: The Soup. This additional content will be more behind the scenes, more food-forward and home-centric. There will be real talk about grocery budgets, dying plants, and my reluctance to mop the floor. There will certainly be some nonsense.

The Soup is about honoring our daily bread, every crumb.

Remember, if you’re reading this email you are already on my list to receive the free monthly email (thank you!) and that won’t change. The free email is where I’ll continue to send big-picture updates, essays, and the like.

If you want The Soup, the nitty-gritty, fun, sometimes silly bonus content will be a paid subscription of $5/month or $45/year. I plan to send The Soup out 2-3 times per month. The first edition will go out next week. If you’d like to add this, you have to sign up! If you can’t swing the subscription fee (been there!) please reply to this email and let me know. I’ll add you for free, no questions asked.

Subscribe by clicking this box, so you don’t miss a thing.

Right now I’m craving respite and rhythm. I hope that’s what The Soup will be for you.

Love & Salsa,

Shannan

PS: Though I’ll be shifting recipes and most “favorite” links over to The Soup, you’ll still get some bonus links in my free emails, like these:

:: Just before the world changed and my packed Spring speaking calendar cleared in a blink, I was grateful to speak at South Bend City Church. You can listen to my message by clicking here.

:: My kids are doing better than I’d have ever imagined through this shutdown, but emotions have been running HOT. We discovered a beautiful book written for kids who feel things EXTRA and it has become a favorite. (I got to choose a book to read to Silas’s class a couple of months ago and this was the one!) The Boy with Big, Big Feelings by Britney Winn Lee

:: As part of my time at SBCC I was asked to write a Benediction. (Keep in mind, this was back in February, when it was still *very* cold here in Northern Indiana, though it snowed 4” last Friday, so WHATEVER, INDIANA.)

Benediction for Ordinary Days by Shannan Martin

May you go out into this cold night warmed by the fire in your own bones.

May you come to see walking shoes, soup spoons, mini vans, and wrinkled hands as worthy tools for the kingdom.

May you crave low places; the messy, the boring, the overlooked, the complicated.

May you grow comfortable with grit in your teeth.

May you see God’s presence in the moon, God’s glory in the clouds, and God’s goodness in the faces around you,

And may you find your shelter in the untamable garden of community, God’s kingdom on earth, right where you are planted.

Grace and peace be with you.

Amen.