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When Peonies Bloom

When Peonies Bloom

Understanding the Nature of Rest

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Janell Rardon
Apr 27, 2025
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When Peonies Bloom
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“Our lives are stories built of small moments. Ordinary experiences. It is too easy to forget that our days are adding up to something astonishing. We do not often stop to notice the signs and wonders. The writing on the wall. But some days we do.”
― Christie Purifoy, Roots and Sky: A Journey Home in Four Seasons

When Peonies Bloom

Today, my first peony decided to bloom.

I’ve been watching her all week, wondering when her “time would come.”

I didn’t want to miss it.

I turned into my driveway and looked into the little garden where she lives.

“Hello!” she smiled. Like a precocious preschooler, she yelled, “Look at me!”

I gasped out loud and with no shame.

She took my breath away.

I ran up to her with childlike faith and wonder.

The beauty of my beloved peony is how she unfolds layer after layer. She helps me develop patience as I unfold layer after layer.

Understanding the Nature of Rest

I have lived with this mantra all year: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the student is really ready, the teacher will disappear” (Lao Tzu).

Right when I needed more understanding about this season of rest I’ve been called to, Master Naturalist, Eryn Lynum, returned to the show to talk about her new book, “The Nature of Rest: What the Bible and Creation Teach Us About Sabbath Living.”

Listen to my luminous conversation with this wise young woman.

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From My Heart to Yours: A new feature I am adding in May for paid subscribers is “Where I Found Beauty This Week,”— a thoughtful, sensory essay from my heart to yours because beauty heals my soul, softens my melancholy, and lifts my spirits like nothing else.

At the end of my 13 years of private marriage and family system coaching, I knew one thing to be true: Clients need more than talk therapy. Deep healing comes from activating the five senses and by adding sensory and somatic experiences into the coaching syllabus. I learned alot in my graduate and post-graduate certifications and training, but this one aspect of coaching I had to experience. Trauma stores itself in the subconscious—in the nervous system of our beings. The day I said goodbye to my last “in-person,” client, I embarked on a new adventure to get more training in these two areas: sensory and somatic experiencing.

I Invite You To Go Deeper With Me: I hope you have been enjoying my free content here on Substack and over on my website and podcast blog. If you’d like to go deeper with me, would you consider becoming a paid subscriber? Here are my paid subscriber offerings:

With your paid subscription, you will receive more from my heart—personal experiences, coaching techniques, and mental and emotional health solutions that will beautify your week.

Heartlift Central is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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