Walking Where Dreams Tread--Keeping Them Alive

When I was a kid I'd walk these tracts of land like some pioneer heading west and roughing it. Reading the sun like a clock for time, searching out herds of cows, walking trails through trees, and lay down in large chicken houses when new shipments of baby chicks came. When the ground was covered in fresh chip pilings and chirps only half-filled the long building and chickens were still puffy balls of fur. I'd stretch out and wait for them to brave their way to me.

They're gone now. Only shells tell the story of where they once were.

Today, we walked the farm and enjoyed a surprise mid-winter visit from Spring. We returned to one of my favorite spots and a place where we are making dreams.

At the back meadow in seclusion, my Hubby dismantled a weedy sprouting of trees, a tangling of barbed wire and we covered ground with a blanket of vision.

We quieted and surveyed our view and soaked our love for this spot. Birds serenaded their unusual song this time of year and an occasional piercing cry of a hawk was heard overhead and we lingered here.

Down a road of dreams we continue, seeking play in dormant seasons and cutting a path for tomorrow. Today is all we have and tomorrow's a gift. So we take time to come, open our eyes and still these moments in time and let our imagination see the things which are not...

...And let tomorrow be wild and free.

 

 
 
Joining gratitudes at Ann's.  And with my Sis, #3 is "Home":
 
My Sister's list:
#10--Home-warm fuzzy/cozy blankets to bundle up in on my comfy furniture; thankful that I have heat and air.

#11-- Home-thankful God provided my house-although is needs several improvements, He gave Steve and I more than we could have asked (or paid for)

#12-- Home-a lot of land to explore and enjoy; nothing like being in the quite country

#13-- Home-a gathering place for friends and family

#14-- Home-sitting on my back porch or by the pool listening to the “country” sounds, or kids playing (or fighting), reading a book, or just thinking.

#15. Home-want it to be a safe refuge for my family; open to all people; a place for other kids to want to come; not be worried about the stains on the carpet or the dishes in the sink or any other “messy” part of the house; a place to be yourself……for what is a house, really, if it can’t be a home----nothing but walls and a roof and “stuff” inside-----the only “stuff” that really matters is what is inside each person that walks thru our doors


Mine:

#207--More than a building, home is a refuge where I am able to be myself and I'm accepted just as I am.

#208--Our little abode of home is a on old farmhouse getting new repairs and updates and each one is a blessing in improvement.

#209--We have enough acreage  to keep busy boys rock collecting, snake hunting, animal track reading, and exploring for many childhood years.

#210--I'm living in the one familiar constant of all my travels and love watching the farm transform.

#211--Home is where memories are made.

#212--No matter how exciting a vacation or great an adventure, home is the place I eagerly return.

Crunched Schedules and Grumpies--A Reluctant Post

It's the words I don't really want to write, the ones stuck between my head and fingers and blank screens, the ones which reveal the nature of my flesh.

Who is stressed when the clock seems to squeeze minutes I don't have to get wherever I need to be on time. Who feels like two little phone calls in one morning has somehow made me late. Who feels that if I didn't have to explain prepositional phrases and compound subjects to my 2nd grader, I wouldn't be so harried and stressed. If lunch didn't require me to cook it, the needed shower not so late, wet hair drying too long, interruptions requiring attention and time, working math calendars, long addition and multiplication with a 4th grader and I could have lots of reasons for being grumpy. Or complaining. And being late.

So I stand in the mirror and finally try to finish what I started. Be on time and beat the clock.

But I can't. Not without sacrifice to those I love. To grump and be unpleasant and generally make everyone miserable so I let go. Skip one thing to have time to breathe and make nice and get somewhere pleasantly.

Instead of pushing family out the door, we lighten the load by lifting a deadline.

The pressure of running behind isn't something I handle well. I'd like to place blame somewhere and usually have because if it weren't for "fill in the blank" then I wouldn't be this mess against the clock.

But honestly, it's usually me. And sometimes true unintended things happen to make things behind schedule but most days this happens, it's my own time (mis)management. Waiting to long to get ready. Or plan ahead. Or stop whatever to make the door easier to pass through without fire or fuss.

I need Grace and more than my family having it for me.

I need change.

I try and wrestle with change but what I need is wholly transformation. To gaze on this new, this Person where sacrifice is welcomed at His feet, this altar of Resurrection. A turning from old "man" snapshots to my new creation already residing inside. To stand before a Holy Spirit mirror and recognize time isn't a taskmaster, but rather every messy minute is a precious gift to look on His face, seek my reflection.....

And find it.

Writing Cost Something

I'm dropping my token of words

and hoping this little discipline of unperfected lines,

 bending under a timer and

I wonder what can be said when blank screens mock.

When I feel emptied out.

 Tugged of all I have, pulled by teaching and Mommying and

cleaning the same spot 20 times a day

and refereeing siblings and feeling like each

morning is the same mess

different calendar number

and honest writing isn't paid with dollars

it's paved in lives.

Minutes seems like small little coins slipped

into a time machine of words and though they seem as

speckled dots before eternity

writing always cost something.

And honest writing is sometimes

paid by things already spent, a past we've known,

or new and fresh and raw,

a lifted lid to our inside

or up against the clock,

or emptied, where silence is all we have

and we pay to write, to art our lives in however we're gifted.

Maybe yours isn't writing.

But you have something.

And I've learned how not writing for years

wasn't really about the silence
or something lost

but about laying things down and letting it be

all the imperfect ways which are made straight

when pathed in Him.

Speaking of how we truly are

even in puddles of muddied water

making it all for One our Heavenward thing.

How He takes the foolish things to confound the wise,

our dirty mess speaking volumes of how Holy yearns to clean it up 

and writing or artfully living for Him cost
to be a Master's piece.

Linking up with Emily's "Imperfect Prose".

When Heaven Rides Shotgun

Turns, bumps, sixty-minute round trips, part country, part highway, and convenience isn't really convenient when you live way out. Our nearest town of 1,200 plus and a twenty-minute round drive to the lone grocery brings prices to match the monopoly. So we drive the sixty-minute rounder for more competitive markets.

An often, almost daily trip and we make the most of our town time, run errands at long stretches and spend a better part of our days in our 14,000 populated "convenience".

And making sixty productive minutes sometimes means sanity in silence, a time of looking over landscapes and just scanning the horizon for God. Watching how the sky changes between an hour and needing to touch Heaven with my eyes. Because I've been between teaching, chef, maid, chore-task-master, typical Mommy-ness and now chauffeur and I need some Holy air to breathe.

Many times silence is broken. A child need, a bickering exchange, an outburst or long talks about being a friend, or a sorely misstepped night of miscommunication between brothers leads to talk of how to talk, open our mouths and speak our need and communicate. And I weary of talk and teach.

Silence is golden and some days I'd pay good money for it.

But I don't really crave the silence.

On many occasions I hold up my hand and ask for silence so we can hear. So we can listen to angels and to David tabernacles' raised up, praise lifted and we steady an ear in silence to worship. Whether it be a cd or Pandora plugged through a phone and this is where the aroma begins.

This is what I crave.

To travel through time, if only an hour, and enter another realm. Adoration and worship and traveling familiar roads and finding space squeezed between places and the frazzle of being everything I can't be, is burned there at the altar of worship.

And sixty minutes is a small token of driving Him home and seat belts aren't needed to hold in praise and speed doesn't limit Heaven on highways.

Gratitudes, of course and more at Ann's place.


My Sis and I continue our journey of marking our gratitudes like a bulls eye and name them like a zeroed target to aim.....

Week #2--Marriage

My Sis:
#8.  Marriage is not to just make us happy but to make us holy
#9.  Marriage is about sharing burdens and working as a team

Mine:

#202. A marriage full of of laughter which keeps each day a fun adventure and a pleasure in humor.
#203. A Christ-centered union which makes that third dimension of two connecting a tie which really does bind deeper.
#204. A marriage of freedom to be who we are gifted to be and encouraging each other toward those gifts, talents, and sometimes trial and errors.
#205. A marriage of dreams. Making them, designing them, planning them and, when we reach them, looking for new ones to keep dreams alive.
#206. A marriage where our differences enhance, not hinder our partnership and help us to see life through a different lens and give us better vision for it.

"Strangers" at the Station--5 minute prompt

Alot of Ozark mountranges had already passed by our window and we only stopped in here for the briefty of bathrooms, gas and snacks to keep kids content and focused on something other than escaping their confining seatbelt for a few more hours.

I couldn't miss the lone man standing near the counter drinking his coffee.

But I dismissed him as I made my rounds through the store and bathroom and it wasn't until we left I realized I'd missed a whole conversation.

My apparent oblivious word exchange became apparent when my ten year old son waves to the man at the counter, who happened to be a policeman, and said "Bye, Tim!" and waved a hearty hand to "Tim" like an old friend.

Later I found out, my bold son had approached the man, held out his hand for a proper gentleman shake and said "Hi, my name is Daniel. What's yours?". And ,Tim formerly introduced now is informed by my son "I get a little nervous around policemen."

Gee. That's good to know. I think.



I'm doing the 5 minute challenge over at Lisa-Jo's "Gypsy Mama" and the prompt is an interesting person you met this week. Click over and join in or read more.

When winter feels like a desert(ed) island

The sandy beach which is only a grain buffered in numbers

distinctly separate but collectively gathered

along shores of life

 like tiny specks in a globed world

and lately I feel like one.

At times a good place for being hidden and

tucked away from

populated throngs to breathe air from open meadows and

wide spaces

 a blanket among millions on speckled fronts

blending to one stretched thing of worldly shore.

But wintered away and tucked behind walls and

it feels like an island

deserted by a distanced world 

separated among waters on my own piece of ground.

So I sit.

And think.

And write like words in sand

which can't hold inscriptions of a finger

pressing letters to it

like a tide smoothing their grooves by carrying them out

on water's deep, leaving only a blank slate on ground.

So I wait.

In a sortof way and scribble on shore.

And these grainy shares reach a body of wet routes across deep 

connecting sandy strips thrust in open waters and tied to the

moisture of an ocean

and though it feels like an island--

we don't always have to be together

to be joined.

I shared this at Emily's "Imperfect Prose". Click over to share yours or read others.

Tortoise and the Hare and We were the Hare-Gratitudes

Four days, four hotels, five states, and twenty-four hours under a seatbelt and we're finally collapsing under our own roof in Texas tonight. Crossing Arkansas' Ozark mountains one day to the plains of Oklahoma, rolling Missouri hills, to dormant corn fields of Iowa and back again in rapid succession with snow and ice resisting our drive up and gray threatening their return in our retreat.

The wintered skies dulled their way along snakey roads and loamy lands. And we slipped through ice and briefly visited family and loaded few things from a family home and became soggy under snow falling down and made our way back for another hotel.

We left in a fog the last leg. Thick and dreary and cold and we strained our way through.

Wearied as we crossed over the Red River into Texas and the sky welcomed like I've come to love about this state. Bright clear skies suddenly broke through and obliterated dull gray ones and the sun's brightness seemed to strike like a match newly lit on a river's bridge. It was like entering another land and the temperature shot up 20 degrees. I marveled again how I love God's creation under these heavens.

And home seems all the sweeter when you've been away.

This past week before travelling jaunts overtook time and space, my sister and I have been plotting our gratitudes. She's joining anew, starting number one today and we've created a list to target our gratitudes like a bull's eye. And one target, #7, was added for it's least appreciated of many things--our body. I've been mulling it nearly two weeks now. I secretly started this one first, because I was a blank slate (and I wonder do I really "heart" my body? And thinking I may need to dig up those gratitudes more often. But that'll be for another week. )



Week #1--Husband:

My Sister's--Michelle

1.  a christian-spends time in Word; same core values

2.  good father-plays with kids; helps with homework

3.  provides for family-has always had a steady job

4.  helps around house-helps with dishes, clothes, yard work, and keeps pool clean

5.  doesn’t mind watching kids to give me time to myself

6.  not negative-always upbeat; is not critical

7.  good looking-always dresses nice, physically fit; clean shaven (most of the time)



Mine--Tammy

197--He's detail-oriented to my big-picture-keep-it-zoomed-out oriented self and he’s my balance, my counterpart which makes the whole thing put together a better thing, our two made one.

198--He loves numbers. And I hate them (I know hate is a strong word, but so is my “dislike” of math). Hence (and much GRATITUDE) he’s the budget guy who keeps the numbers.

199--He’s a follower-through-er. He aims at finishing what he starts and carries things through to the end.

200--He’s steady and is able to stay the course and march on even when I want to throw my hands up in the air and wave the white flag of defeat.

201--His pace is slow to my rabbit-hare speed which would rush headlong into a commitment I’d quickly regret the minute a “Yes, I’ll do____” comes out of my mouth. He’s my pull to slow down and encourages me to take time to think things through before rushing into anything.

Star Bright And the 5 Minute Challenge

The canopy twinkles her lights from the Heavens and we look and search and find those dippers of childhood.

And sometimes we need help to look closer and visit Planteriums and learn the stars so we can find others. There's a small victory in seeing a new light and knowing what it is.

We're studying the Heavens this year and the telescope with all it's gadgets, buttons, and do-dads make it seem a wee big complicated.

So we study the telescope and learn it's angles, and view finder and work the buttons and we finally had success.

Craters could be seen and the sun even glinting of the bottom of a cresecnt moon and victory soared in the sighting.

And we continue, studying Heaven, and knowing we'll never be able to know all the names of the stars He's hung, but just knowing He laid them there makes it all the more fun and inspiring.


This is the 5 minute, unediting writing challeng at Lisa-Jo's "The Gypsy Mama". Click over to join her or just read the others.

Spiritual Cliffs

It's there.

The opposite of darkness

and toes skirting precipices of blackness

and questioning, and wondering if true at all

this thing of God.

It was years ago and

I flirted with it's edges, felt bereft of Holy

and far from pure, just full of riddled mistake

and I was drawn to the climatic point of questions and no answers.

Hanging on the side of a spiritual cliff

 like dry bones walking inside skin

like a daughter slopping waste and wondering if I only

imagined my Father's house

  a mind which wanted rational answers

or to bully a spirit into logic or reason.

And I felt danger,

my soul in the balance, like a sheep feeling wolf's breath

and I ran, hard, and away in full pursuit.

Defying my mind by letting heart lead the way

so all else had to follow

and sometimes by Holy braille

and searching, feeling

finding, and holding to things

unseen by natural but opened by removing scales.

Passionately pursuing, total abandonment

like I used to live to sin,

but now to Him

and not needing answers, just

this Person. It is there.

Better than answering questions,

and I didn't know it possible, for relationships to cross the sky

didn't dare it true, to know beyond what a mind comprehends

to hear above the fray of soulish hearts and find the

still small Voice speaking. 

And when I fail, when I stumble, when I don't measure up

when I am good, for nothing,

fleshing out my walk with Creator of it all,

It reminds of how red made white

Righteousness clothing this breathing dirt

like a Holy blanketing snow on the earth.

There it is--white. Righteousness reminding our covering.

And no weather is needed to pull the storehouse down

no cold is needed to freeze it in place

no worry of it melting away

or turn a muddy mix with ground and clay

just a grabbing of

hem, a grasping for white

and more than an answer

the start of new Life.

I shared this at Emily's "in the hush of the moon", "Imperfect Prose".

When the Clouds Fall to the Ground

The storehouse tips it's white paint and pieces of fluff fall down and it's like clouds breaking apart to the ground. A slow, subtle start seemed to lack a go and inside little human hooves begged to stampede and I hesitated like the flakes wavered by the air. And I told a friend of my fuddy-duddy ways which hesitates fun and lingers from having messes to clean up and she texted back like a double-dogged dare:

"Just go WILD!"

Then it poured.

And a big-capped word stared at me like something long ago forgotten but then remembered like a dream as high as the sky and why not:

Just go, WILD!

So I released the "herd" and let it begin.

The dirty dishes stood their tall salute from a kitchen sink, but I left their dutiful watch to be part of memories-in-making. The clean clothes piled up on the bed waiting for hands to tuck and fold, but I let them nap and instead busied hands with a camera. Leftover lunch continued their stare from countertop spaces, but I left their stale state for crisp, white air.

I let wet-leaky feet come time and again, boys in and out and back. Doors slamming, multiple changes of clothes, trekking from one side to another and let body parts get cold and ignored how it'd all be a mess.

And let wild run free...

Because we all need days like these....

...where on a moments notice we ignore dishes begging for cloth, overlook mud stains keeping their dark, and let wet-soiled clothes pile high for wash. And just for one day, blaze a trail, footprint a path, run new memories down the lane and. go. buck. Wild.


Gratitude:

#188--Friends and family to share the day, separated by distance, by close by text or electronic means...

#189--Snow!. In. Texas. Again. Another. Year.

#190--A car which skidded through our side yard and drove off without a major accident.

#191--Hubby who was able to be home and share this white stuff with our boys (last year he was working to far away).

#192--Our toasty pot-belly stove. I feel like Laura Ingall and love this.

#193--Letting loose and allowing the wild-side go so my boys could enjoy their day in snow.

#194--Talking to my Sis and my niece and sharing the day

#195--Enjoying family time, hot cocoa, breakfast meals for all day and a midday run to town (before the roads got slippery).

#196--Having my Honey here at our side, in front of a warm stove, and remembering these are the memories that will last.


Visit more gratitudes at Ann's place.

The Way Up From the Pit

It's what nibbled the edges of my thoughts and I found the next interstate exit and turned the car around because I couldn't see through tears. And I wondered if the obvious was obvious to passers-by zipping past and if they knew my constant hand-to-face motion was for dabbing eyes.

Ever since my prodigal return, you'd think I'd be used to it by now. But I'm not. After years of a hard, protective shell I now live with this tenderized heart which produces inconvenient tears and a store errand was canceled in mid-stride by them. And I'm haunted.

By failure.

It wasn't a notion my first time at parenting over 21 years ago but now in my second and third go round, failure knocks. And yesterday, it stood at my door all day.

And I know this one which appears as failure when peered through flesh and I need Holy goggles to plunge beyond murky waters to see with Eyes beyond life's glass.

Fear isn't always of the unknown, but many times of the known, of past experience, of present situations, of knowing how different things really are versus how they were planned to be.

And I'm in the pit.

A weepy yesterday of feeling like parent-failure can make it's haunt as I think of how it is my kids who don't sit still, or speak in whispers, or treat friends with compassion and grace, or share with others, or respect boundaries and for goodness sake, quit squirming already. The list could grow and fear and failure grow with it. And nobody placed me here other than my own fear pushing me over.

And I was a mess of hot tears and messy heart, dissecting and wrestling between flesh and Truth. I'm still not there but I have been here before. The fall out of past sins and knowing the ruins it leaves over years, even though far removed from them and how it looks like an ugly bush but knowing He turns all things to the good of them who love Him.

And there it is.

All I have at the bottom of miry clay.

Love.

Reaching down to pull me out, no matter how I've let my fear push me in, how I've allowed my pit to swallow me up, how I remind myself I need constant change and help with parenting and how I feel to weak to be good at it.

There it is. Him.

And all my heart. All my soul. All my mind. And all my meager strength presses into Love for it's the only sure thing.

I don't have a step number three or even a numbered two for coming out of fear's failure, I just keep coming back to one. I'm sure it leads to more, outside the pit, but here in the bottom there is only one rope up and the rope has a label and requires my sweaty grip and it's labeled Love.

The holy habit of forsaking my fears for the abode of His dwelling place, casting off my torment and allowing imperfection to be perfected by Love.

And today, I'm a rope climber being perfected.

"..God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him....There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love." John 4:16 and 18 

 I also shared this at Elizabeth Esther's "Saturday Evening Post", click over for more and leave yours.

I shared this at Ann's place for more Holy Habits on "Walk with Him" Wednesday, click over for more reads.

.

Ps. I have some dear grace disciples who help me carry the load and I'm so very grateful for them. Blessed to know I can be a mess with them.

When Words Fumble

I'm a tongue-tied girl who speaks a native language
but my toes wiggle in soil fallen from heights of
Babel, this floor of confused speech,
and I need an Interpreter.
Gray visits my window and hangs it's roof

overhead and naked trees remind me of how leaves are like words

loosening a branch for floor and for flight.

Leave-rain gathers them in season to puddles below

unclothing limb's wooden bark

like mouth limbs loosening a clutch of innermost parts.

And I only know words through the filter

of a world which waxes between Life and death

while word-y fruit piles around us
and we rake through them for Life.
Imperfect arrives this week and how appropriately
I'm reminded of imperfection.
How Hope sprouts a bud, a tree,
many branches stretching heavenward clinging to a Vine,
the Branch of Life and how it was in the beginning
this Word.
And I want math to do miracles, adding
subtracting and solving problems with only
one and the same answer.
How I want rivers to plunge under word-y banks
and find spirit to Spirit the only Spoken which whets
and be like watered vessel glinting under light,
sunbeams bouncing along top to refract like a golden bright.
How river beds collect them at bottom
tumbled smooth by Counsel and how some are stenographed
on a soul
and need a Holy Transcription.
And how I want my verbose speech
be like a compass to Home, my language to do miracles,
fractions or divisions follow the sum
where my speech would only speak
just One.

^"For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.." Hebrews 11:14

At Emily's "Imperfect Prose", click over with yours to link up or just read the gathered lines.

I also shared this "Spiritual Sundays".

I Scoffed At Those Israelites--Until I Realized I Was One

I could name the characters, describe the imagery, recite lines, or even give you the title, but all I now think about is the overall mood of last year as it plays like a movie in my head and it's the final scene. I wanted a microwaved change if for nothing but vanity.

Last year was full of my own moody brokenness. Broken like a ceiling ripped open to lower a crippled person through a roof to Jesus. And I was crippled and laying at His feet.

Vanity is pride's accomplice to a dictatorship of hearts,

a tyranny to rule the mind. 

I had counted the cost a few years back and found my heart exposed, between me, Him and a house. And vanity. I didn't really want to forsake it all if it meant I had to move again, tread unknown, to leave this behind and why can't He just do it here in this house, this place?

But I did leave. We all did. Answered the call in taking care of my widowed Grandmother who needed us.

But deep down, I only imagined a short-term sacrifice. I never imagined long-term limbo of stewardship. I couldn't foresee the waiting-with-no-end-in-sight kind of sacrifice. And look at what shallowness it took to lower me down.

Manna was Israel's subsidence for a season and they gathered from the lower reaches. A process of bending and stooping to pull it up from the wilderness floor. A humbled posture.  A downward reach to just above the dust where we were first created--a dirt floor. I wonder if there was music in their bended joints? If they felt praise and worshipped as they bowfully collected Heaven on earth?

"And when the layer of dew lifted, there, on the surface of the wilderness, was a small round substance, as fine as frost on the ground....and the house of Israel called its name Manna."

Exodus 16:14 and 31 (NKJ)

Or did they grumble because gathering Manna required work, bending, and stooping low? And why couldn't God just deliver it straight to the basket anyway? Why do we focus more on aching backs in our real life than we do on hands aching to touch Heaven?

And I'm far from having "arrived" to anything other than I'm constantly more aware of my frailty by way of a wicked heart. Brokenness exposes the ugly inside and last year's Expectation peered the depths. Gratefully, the darkness causes more love for Light and my cling to the neck of Him who tore the veil.

And circling land by a Holy fire makes us feel far from any Promised lands but there is Hope. If we are humbly postured in search for Heaven on earth, in gathering subsidence from Above, in bowing down to the Bread of Life, then there is Manna waiting to feed us and to make even the wilderness taste sweet.

"And the house of Israel called its name Manna.And it was like white coriander seed, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." Exodus 16:31 (NKJ)

Gratitudes (of course):

-My Hubby's job as an air ambulance pilot which provides for most of the farm toiling, my stay-at-home work load, schooling two rowdy boys, and then some

-Updates to our little worn-down farmhouse: new siding, new windows, new roof, new paint, and our cozy potbelly stove.

-My Hubby's hardwork of: repairing fence lines, adding new barbed wire, cutting down trees, making a new pathway (our future driveway entrance), bush hogging wayward acres, more cutting down trees, reworking ditch work to make the farm road drain better, new gates (and the list is long)

-Cows! Are back. After years without any livestock on the farm, we now have cows

-Trash. It pays at the scrapyard if recycled

-A Hubby who loves the farm, even the hard parts

-Two boys, one who's a cowboy at heart and the other who's still a warrior

-A new year to see more change

-A true Comforter who fills my need even when I've misplaced them

-Joy which finds its way up from a heart bowed over in worshipful Heaven gathering

-Manna which whets our appetite for Home

-Promised land already addressed inside me

-To continue to taste and see that the Lord really is good


I shared this at Ann's place, for more gratitude journey's click over and join in.