Danielle Kartes - You Were Always There: Notes and Recipes for Living a Life You Love

I can still see a particular high school teacher of mine holding his hand out in front of himself twenty-two years ago, just an inch of space between his thumb and index finger. I was near graduation, about to enter the world Id been told about for so long.

You see, he said, this time in your life feels big. It feels profound, and it is. But this time represents just this much of who you are meant to be and the life youve been created to live. This inch is just a moment in all your life, just a slice in the time youll spend here. Make it worthwhile. Make it good. Never forget where you came from, and trudge ahead into this blessing of a life.

I invite you in to just an inch of my life, small yet profound, wrought with laughter and lessons and tears, cleansing words and honest truths Ive learned, humble pie Ive eaten, and glorious mountaintop moments, never to be forgotten. I have so much more to learn and live but so much to share.

These notes from my life encapsulate a time when I figured out that in spite of what I believed at the time, I had not lost myself. It presents a time in my life when my marriage, seemingly against the odds, survived and became a beautiful reminder to me of how much God truly cares about the smallest details, a time of forgiving myself and others. These essays paint a picture of building a business only to lose it all and then rebuilding a far more beautiful business in its place. I want to tell you things, like how I fell in love with my husband again after significant loss and how I fell in love with my life after it felt like my world was falling down around me. I want to tell you about my deep love for motherhood and the purpose I discovered in being a parent. I once thought food ruined my life, but in reality, it saved me. Cooking became my education, my therapy, my lifeline. Id cook to heal and Id cook to live. I learned through cooking that God didnt make me a failure and that life is much like perfecting a recipe. You start out with an idea, and if it fails, you keep trying until youve crafted a wonderful dish. And when you revisit that recipe years later, you improve it further by using the new things youve learned. To me, a recipe is never done; its meant to be fiddled with, rewritten, just like life. As I grow and change, I hope to be better with each new day. I hope that I can always revisit old ways of doing things and incorporate the new lessons Ive learned in the meantime. You have to hold on to good stuff and build upon it.

Stories of deep healing are woven throughout this book. These words represent how Ive been polished through the years to shine the way I do today, all with an understanding that theres still polishing to be done, of course. There are recipes here too! They are simple and delicious; may each one remind you that you can make it . A symphony of living pours through these pages. Glorious triumphs, growing seasons, and finding wonderful things in pockets we thought were empty.

Here, the low and dark days mingle with such deep joy, all of it adding up to a beautiful slice of my life. If I can relay to your heart just a moment of my experience and point you toward Jesus and a love and a force and a God so sweet, then Ill have done my job. The power of the Holy Spirit, Ive learned, is fierce and wonderful. We need to hear one anothers stories, for they are powerful reminders that we can do this thing called life. Together. We are never alone. May I always be sweetly broken and filled with joy and hope, willing to sharesometimes even before Im ready to share. May I always be vulnerable and real. My story isnt profound, my life no more worthy than any other. Ive learned that simply getting out of my own way inevitably reveals a life that is precious, ordinary, and brilliant in extraordinary ways. All life is precious, and our stories need to be told.

Your life is, and always has been, a gift.