You Know What’s Real Good?
Things God didn’t have to make but He did anyway… just because. Color, mountain ripples in the far horizon, sunsets, daisies- all smooshed together and I can see it all with my eyes.
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“…that he that runs may read it”
Yesterday early morning I heard my feller rumble up the gravel drive in his truck; scrub pants and a tshirt on, homemade scrub cap in his bag full of pens and notepads and journals of all kinds. He left the role of Husband, Dad, and Farmer behind for another dark-to-dark day of doing his very and mightiest best to understand, just a little bit better than he did the day before, how to treat a packed-tight hospital full of people … Continue reading“…that he that runs may read it”
When You’re Alone
The other day I took the kids to school, it was my birthday. It was their first day all four of them in school at the same time in weeks. So I went for a walk, to feel less alone. I think we can be too alone, not alone enough, or both at the same time. Do we all feel a little in that last category these days? I told a friend that I think there’s a trick to feelings. … Continue readingWhen You’re Alone
What Would Happen…
If we started the day, every day, telling the Lord that we surrender *completely* our plans for the day…. Our hopes for our plans… …and those deep griefs that we can’t even find words for. If we hung on like Jacob did until we receive the blessing. I’m here to find out. Our names are engraved on Your hands… … and even as we grapple, that is ever on Your mind. May it be on mine today, too.
To Wait Right
My sweet feller hung me a clothesline, but it keeps raining on my laundry. It’s raining right now, again. Those towels out the window hang low, bouncing the drops right off the line, and the wind pulls them back and forth. Who knew it rains this much in August? And I am waiting, inside. Give me grace to wait right. Your words are my oxygen. And I will listen for them as long as it takes.
July
I haven’t written in a month, but July is like that every year. July is kind of like December. You love everything that there is to do but you don’t intend to keep up this kind of pace forever. Also, the boys keep finding me. My red birds have moved into their summer home in the cedars along the little springs and creeks under the trees. Goldfinches are still around at the feeders and the hummingbirds have moved back in. … Continue readingJuly
When Sorrow and Hope Hold Hands For a While
Maybe this is how the year feels to you so far: Like it’s been struck by lightning. Loss feels a little helpless watching things burn up. It begs for an answer, scrambles for a plan. So often we have tears in the middle of our prayers, don’t we? It’s like the thing that drives us to Hope, is Sorrow. Sorrow and Hope hold hands sometimes. And sometimes we just need to let them.
When Our Humanity Fails Us
Last evening I got the boys in bed before sunset, and walked up the hill behind the house, thinking and feeling very human. Very small. We want to go out and do, and save all of the wounded. Oppression cripples us, rage lights the world on fire. We ache to drop the walls of our humanity like a bad habit, because days like these we feel a little trapped. How can we “glorify God”, like the catechism says we’re to … Continue readingWhen Our Humanity Fails Us
A Change In the Light
For the days when those low hanging clouds seem brush the top of your very soul. When maybe just last night, a whole sky full of rain and winds of doubt squashed flat the places in you that had started to grow. Where do you look on days like this, when the whole world feels damp? At everything that’s wrong with you and your work and the people around you, and the weather, too? We’ve worked a whole day long, … Continue readingA Change In the Light
The Gray Hay Days: When the Sun Rinses Out
This was our first spring at the farm here in Virginia. Where the fields had been used for corn before we moved here, there was no telling how good of a hay cutting there would be our first year here. But the guys got heaps and heaps of pretty grass mowed and raked, tedded then raked again. It was pretty hay and perfect haying weather too- a sky as blue and sharp as any sky in Eastern Montana ever was; … Continue readingThe Gray Hay Days: When the Sun Rinses Out