The Rambly How

by Sarah Elizabeth September 11, 2026

Since I was a little girl and we got a computer with an application on it called Creative Writer, I have always wanted to send out a newsletter of sorts—in the old-fashioned, stamped-and-hand-delivered way.

I lived in a cozy neighborhood with about ten or twelve houses, and I would tuck a little newsletter into the neighbors’ mailboxes. Jokes, recipes, introducing a neighbor. I felt so industrious riding my bike around, delivering letters and creating something that I believed created community. Something that created a spark.

Honestly, it was the same feeling inside as those four sisters tucked up in the attic in Louisa May Alcott's novel. A newsletter the girls put together call the Pickwick Portfolio or something like that. All those feels tucked into my heart. This was before I ever knew the joys of Jo and all of her sisters.

If the Creative Writer suite were still around, I would employ it vigorously today in my forties.

As a creative, I often find myself in a studio crowded with ideas. So many ideas come to me, and I believe it is that same little girl wanting to create something that sparks joy, lightheartedness, community, youthful wonder—and perhaps even awakens the giddiness of reimagining your spaces and creating cozy for all who visit and stay.

Isn’t that what art can do?

Spark.
Awaken.
Exhort.

Today I made a list.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve scribbled this list down. It is the list of all my ideas. It’s all I know to do with them at the moment.

I asked God for wisdom of how.

I have the what. I just need the how.

When I met my husband, I told him, “I don’t mind being told what to do. I don't want to be told I can't do something."

I can follow directions so well.

And I believe God knows this about me.

I have all of these ideas I believe He puts in my heart. They literally won’t stop multiplying. Which is why I asked God to give me the dang how.

I see the product. I feel the joy of it.

But dang it, HOW?

For this desire I’ve had since I was maybe eight—to send out a letter, a newsletter, a magazine, SOMETHING—I finally just took a photo of a print with an envelope, posted it to my shop, and said:

JOIN THE FUN!

That’s how The Studio Letters came to be.

It’s a six-month snail mail subscription: a handwritten letter, a print of a favorite piece of art, and a little stowaway of some sort—usually a quote, because God knows I love them.

I began in August.

I thought, I can handle six months.

I also thought, I don’t know what I will say, but I know I’ll have something to say when I sit down to write each month.

I just sent out the second month yesterday, and I was filled with joy.

Inside my heart, it feels so good to finally do something that has been in me for so long.

I have so many major pulls like that. Things that mostly seem silly, but to me, it is the silly things that truly pack a punch in this life. I see fruitfulness in others and in myself when I do them.

The ideas seem so many and so easy to come by, but the starting—or rather, the WHERE to start—is tricky for me.

I’m not sure if it has to do with the overwhelm of all the options and paths there are, or if it is a rush of time in me that happens daily. A feeling that tells me there isn’t time to sit down and figure it out.

Here’s a story that comes to mind.

When things come to mind, I’ve gotta say them, of course.

Two things to paint the picture:

One, over ten years ago I was sitting in a church that I didn’t want to be in. I had a heightened awareness of how they were fear-mongering to get people to seek God, and my response to that is always and always will be: BLEH.

Two, I keep a running list in my phone of animal names.

Dogs, usually.

But that was a gateway for chicken names.

So I’m sitting in this church, actively not listening, and all of a sudden I hear one of my favorite verses:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…”

Psalm 23.

IT HIT ME.

SURELY—Shirley—GOODNESS and MERCY would make the PERFECT chicken names.

So I pulled out my phone, wrote the chicken names down on my list, and began dreaming up a coop, a run, and, of course, other chicken names.

For maybe four years I literally saw these chickens following me around in my yard.

Then COVID hit.

And something I never talk about on here: a divorce.

It was just me and my two girls at my house. Spring of 2020. And when the girls were gone with their dad on the weekends, I had a lot of time to myself. A lot of time even to let dreams that had been on my heart for years come out.

I was desperate for company with family in another state. I was desperate to live out the dreams that had been on my heart for years. I was desperate, though not fully cognizant of it at the time, for the counseling I needed for all that had happened.

And I’m not talking about one-on-one therapy.

I’m talking about all the healing that God, our Wonderful Counselor, gives.

I had never built anything other than a table, or anything more than what is entailed with following my stepfather around like a shadow when he was building our house and I had “helped.”

So I was trying to figure out where to buy a coop.

A cute one.

And also have it be just as much money as it would cost to build one, because I could see the coop in my head. I could taste the eggs. I could see the chickens—Surely, Goodness, and Mercy—following us around the yard.

But THE COOP.

I needed a coop.

That was a block for me in getting chickens.

Another block was: How the heck do I take care of adult chickens?

Then one day, a wind blew through.

A very specific wind that I like to call WILD HAIRS.

I get these often, and they get the jobs done.

The wind came and blew a wild hair that basically told me:

Go get the chicks. Start there.

So the girls, who were four and two at the time, and I drove to a hatchery. We picked out ten chicks, ten chick names, and chicks that laid eggs in all different colors so we would know who to properly thank once they began laying eggs.

I grabbed a large storage tub from the garage, put some bedding in it, and put the gaggle of chicks in the laundry room.

That was my how.

A day or two passed and I realized:

OH. THIS is the how I needed.

It lit a fire under the timeframe rather than allowing my excuses to keep me stuck—not finding a coop, not knowing how to take care of adult chickens.

Within a few weeks, maybe a month, I would need to have a dang coop and a run for these chicks.

Otherwise, I would have full-grown chickens living in my laundry room.

And I didn’t need to know how to take care of adult chickens.

I just needed to know how to care for chicks.

And it basically entailed keeping their space clean, giving them water and food, and making sure their little buttholes stayed uncrusty.

I’m laughing at that word and picturing you all stumbling upon it.

The friends you are to read these journals and stumble upon the words uncrusty and buttholes.

Thank you for being a friend.

After finding and purchasing some coop-building plans for $12, I took my supply list to Home Depot and batted my eyes for help.

Voila.

I had the materials.

It all started with building the base in my garage, employing a neighbor to help me carry it down under the maple trees in my yard.

And that’s when both the work and the counseling started.

Do you know how many times I would walk down to my coop from my garage and realize I had left the measuring tape?

The pencil.

The board.

The hammer.

The phone to call my stepfather and ask how.

He’d answer, “Greenwell Hardware,” because that was his last name and he knew I was calling the best builder I knew for answers.

It was all those miles in between—walking back and forth, grabbing the tools I had forgotten—that God gently began addressing one thing at a time.

He began healing my heart in the places it had been shattered, shut down, or sheltered for safekeeping during the six difficult years prior.

He showed me, in a very tangible way, what it means that He is the Wonderful Counselor.

Not one time did I feel pressured with a list of all the ways I was out of alignment in my heart.

He just addressed it all with goodness and lovingkindness. And one thing at a time.

It literally happened when, and only when, I was walking back and forth up the long yard to the coop and back to the garage.

I finished that coop.

And I felt like I could kick in a wall.

I went on to design, in my head alone, the run to attach to the chicken door of the coop.

I didn’t need plans.

I didn’t need a how.

I just saw it in my mind.

I measured it out, made it three times the suggested size for the amount of inhabitants, added the cute around it, and put protection of wire down deep into the ground.

I went on to raise those little chicks to trust me.

I cuddled them at night when they could fit in my hand. One at a time, after I’d put the girls to bed, I’d hold a chick, watch a show, and teach those chicks to trust me.

I’d put them on my shoulder and let them hide under my hair, like they were getting something they would have had with a mother hen.

I painted the coop white.

Put a tin roof on the run.

Hung potted flowers from the side of the run.

Put in a brick walkway made from old bricks someone was selling.

And I had Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy—Lovingkindness—following me around the yard in more ways than one.

On social media at the time, you would have been following along.

You wouldn’t have heard that I was in the midst of a divorce.

You wouldn’t have heard that I felt like I was barely keeping my head above water.

You wouldn’t have seen me sitting under the framed roof of the coop, crying on the phone with my stepfather, wondering and trying to work out how the heck all those nails and screws were supposed to fit in one joint.

You wouldn’t have heard me sing the only song stuck in my head over those weeks of building—A Whole New World—with these lyrics running through my head:

“No one to tell us no, or where to go, or say we’re only dreaming.”

You wouldn't have heard me mutter to myself on repeat: "God you put the lonely in families, God you put the lonely in families."

You wouldn’t have heard me cry at night, thankful that there were other heartbeats in the house.

Those of my chickens.

You would have only heard me say, over and over and over and over again:

GO DO THE THINGS ON YOUR HEART TO DO.

I went on to build a 36-by-36-foot garden that summer, too.

I added nine garden boxes.

Built my own gate. Took me only 15 dang minutes.

Somewhere along the way, I knew HOW.

I can’t say that when I write these, they will always have a point.

I think the point is to process.

And for me, now at the end of this, I see it a little more clearly.

I had a dream of having chickens.

I wanted to have something for my girls to love and care for and thank for eggs.

I needed counseling.

I had dreams on my heart that I had been told, No. No. No. You can’t do that.

I had names come to me years before I was ever able to do what was on my heart to do.

When I was building a house for Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy (and Penny, Sweetie, Jubilee, Tickles, Strawberry—and almost Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, Honey and Rainbow), I didn’t know that all those miles I was walking up and down the yard meant that I SURELY had God’s goodness and lovingkindness following me.

Chasing me down.

Healing my heart.

Helping my silly dreams come true.

And it was that same yard that, months later, adult Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy were following me around in because they trusted me.

I have all these dreams.

I need the how.

And I’m giggling as I realize these HOWs will probably not come in a strategic, step-by-step way that would come most easily to most people.

It will probably be more like:

Go buy the chicks.

And hey, if you want a feather-free laundry room, you better go do what’s on your heart to do.

Do you ever process things in a roundabout way?

Journaling is so perfect for that.

The chickens were so good for us.

The building was so good for me at that time.

The dream becoming tangible was a gift.

There I was, during all that walking back and forth, getting back to myself after hiding a very precious part of me away for safekeeping during a very difficult handful of years.

And The Studio Letters became more than I thought they would, too.

I sent them out to the customers who had subscribed, and then I had this thought fly in and light me up with JOY:

I should send these to all my people.

And so I sent out thirty plus more to family and friends.

And there I was again.

That little girl, biking around the neighborhood with a wild hair.

WHY OH WHY do the hows matter so much?

I feel like the how is right there, waiting for the right step.

But the only thing keeping me is the process of THINKING THERE IS A MAGICAL HOW TO BE FOUND.

There isn’t.

It’s literally just one step.

Buying the chicks.