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A Place Only You Can Go

With our oldest daughter’s wedding a week away marriage has been on my mind. I’ve been married twenty-three years and I’m still not good at it all the time. Last week while cleaning out the garage, Scott and I got in a fight. He insisted on throwing stuff away that I wanted to donate. I said he was wasteful. He called me rebellious. Like the cherry on a sundae that makes you sick, I topped our fight off by calling him a donkey. Actually the rear end of a donkey and I didn’t use such nice terms. Later on, Scott […]

By Paula June 16, 2012

Looking for Bluebirds

Yesterday I found bluebird feathers on our front porch. When I saw the feathers, I nearly cried. Picking them up, I walked around the house to the backyard nest I’ve been checking for days now. Sure enough, the nest was empty. The four baby bluebirds gone. They’d launched on a day I wasn’t ready. Didn’t lock the dogs up as I’d been doing in case they came out. Cami’s getting married and I spent the day on wedding work with friends. It’s hard not to get overwhelmed hosting your daughter’s three-hundred-people wedding.I scanned the yard praying three small birds had […]

By Paula June 9, 2012

The Cost of Mercy

We buried her under an oak tree, but I can’t get to the mailbox now without seeing her crushed there on the driveway near the cherry trees. Our sweet little black and white dog, Mercy. It happened a week ago and my heart still aches.It was the afternoon of Lacy’s graduation. We picked cherries along our driveway with the boys running around. The dogs running around. Everyone eating cherries and telling stories until my dad towed a utility trailer down our drive. Right in front of us the trailer ran over Mercy. This little dog we named Mercy because six years […]

By Paula June 2, 2012

Time

Farming takes time. This ritual of raising things moves at its own pace. Each morning at sunrise the rooster crows reminding me I must feed chickens today. Gather eggs today. Toss hay to the horses. Walk the garden. All this working and waiting on land and animals. The work comes naturally. The waiting not so much. It’s time that gets me.The tomato plants seem tiny as I buy them in town when winter backs down. Tucking them in the ground, the wait begins. Months before tomatoes arrive on the vine. Watering daily. Weeding weekly. Staking spindly plants up as they […]

By Paula May 24, 2012

Rolling Sweetness

“The LORD said to him, Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say” Exodus 4:11-12. I read this Exodus passage in my devotions after meeting with our son’s 3rd grade teacher yesterday. I haven’t searched for this passage, it has found me, falling perfectly on the day I need it. The 3rd grade teacher believes our son may be struggling with dyslexia. I believe she may be right. Funny thing […]

By Paula May 17, 2012

What You Serve

You serve what you love… the thought sweeps through my mind as I smell the Jergen’s lotion rubbed into my hands in the church bathroom on Sunday morning. The scent of Jergen’s always reminds me of my grandma. She’s been gone a long time. Gone but not forgotten because of love and Jergen’s. Grandma served what she loved. Her five grandchildren. Especially her two grandsons. I see Grandma rubbing Jergen’s lotion onto their sunburned skin. Those beloved boys of hers who worked the field tending the tomatoes our family sold in the summer back in those days. The scent of Jergen’s takes […]

By Paula May 8, 2012

Little Men

I remember the discovery of each one. The wonder and what if’s and what will be’s of these babies. How badly I wanted a boy before they came. And then getting one. Then two. Then three. Then four. Then five little men. The dream rising like a Phoenix in my life. The memory of telling my grandma when I was ten years old that I would have five boys. She had four sons and one pregnancy lost and in those days I adored my “horse” grandma. She ran a stables, rode horses instead of walking, and loved her boys. And I […]

By Paula April 27, 2012