He is With You

Sometimes I get swallowed up in the busyness of life. From birthdays and family outings to paying bills and calling repair guys, I rarely have time to sit and relax without those nagging "shoulds."

Sometimes I complain about minor inconveniences. I get all the way home from the grocery store and realize I forgot laundry detergent. And we live so far from town and gas is so expensive.

Sometimes nothing makes sense. In a world of so much pain and suffering, so much anger and violence, so much illness and death, it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. It's easy to wonder if there even is a bigger picture to see.

Sometimes I forget about God. I don't take enough time to pray and I take my blessings for granted. I'm too busy going here and there and doing this and that. Too busy to feel His presence in the moments when I need Him the most.

But sometimes I wake up to this...

And for one simple moment, I do stop. And I do listen. And I am grateful. Because life is busy and loud and inconvenient, but it's all part of a journey that is cloaked in a deeper meaning, a greater beauty, a higher purpose.

Those are the moments that bring me back to the heart of what really matters. Those are the moments that reset my compass and point me back toward inner peace and toward He who provides it. Those are the moments that drown out the sound of life rushing by, silencing the roar just long enough to hear the Lord's calming whisper, "I am with you."

Stop in those moments. Forget the rush. Forget the roar. Forget the shoulds. Just stop. And breathe. And listen. And remember - you never walk alone. He is with you.

Birthday Party Mania!

This might seem a bit out of the ordinary compared to my usual content, but I can explain. We just celebrated Reese's 3rd birthday and during her party I had several people make "this should be on Pinterest" comments. I'm not necessarily all that creative in any particular area, but every now and then I come up with random things that turn out to be pretty cool (or so I'm told). I thought it would be fun to add a new element to this site, so consider this my first venture into a new type of blog post. Now, I'm sure I'm not the first person to come up with a lot of these things, but everything I post here will always  be my own ideas (unless otherwise credited).

I figured I would start with the two things that generated the aforementioned Pinterest comments... 

I'm not big into huge expensive birthday parties - especially for little kids who don't know the difference. I didn't choose a theme for any of Reese's birthday parties. I made the cakes myself and bought whatever decorations and paper products happened to be on sale. My goal is always to make the day as nice as possible while spending as little money as possible - a process I find to be way more fun anyway.

My biggest challenge every year is the cake. I have no formal cake decorating skills whatsoever (actually, the cake for Reese's first birthday was my first attempt ever). I thought it would be fun to try to do something completely different every year so this year I decided to follow the cupcake trend. The cupcakes were very simple so I wanted a nice display. I didn't have a display tower so instead I used Reese's Little People Disney Princess castle... 

I also wanted to do some kind of game or activity with the kids - something that would be fun, cheap, easy to put together, and manageable for a bunch of three-year-olds. We live on two acres so we ended up doing a goodie bag scavenger hunt and the kids loved it!  

I gathered 10 buckets from around the house. (Random buckets are on my list of things I never pass up at garage sales so I always have a bunch). I filled each one with a goodie bag item (so one bucket had pencils, another had sand box toys, another had bottles of bubbles, and so on). Then I set up a table with crayons, stickers, and white paper bags with each child's name. Inside each bag was a checklist of the things they needed to find. We corralled all the kids into the garage to decorate their bags, and while they were doing that Matt placed the buckets around our property. We turned the kids loose (with parents in tow to help read the checklists), and they put together their own goodie bags with the 10 items from the buckets. It went over so well that we will likely make it a birthday party tradition!

Thanks for joining me today. Keep watching for more fun tips, creative gifts, really random ideas, and (as always) inspiration stories and moments worth sharing. For easy access to new posts, you can now follow my blog on Pinterest.  Have a blessed day! 

So God Made a Mother

By far, my favorite Super Bowl commercial this year was the Dodge Ram ode to farmers. After almost five years of marriage to the son of a hardworking, self-giving, family-honoring farmer, each line touched my heart with words that are all too true. As I listened, I couldn’t help noticing the many parallels between the cultivators of crops and livestock and the nurturers of children and families. So I decided that we moms deserve our own version...
________

And on the eighth day, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, "I need a caretaker." So God made a mother.

God said, "I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fold laundry, wash dishes, work all day, fold more laundry, wash more dishes, eat a cold supper, give baths, read stories, stay up past midnight, and then do it all again tomorrow." So God made a mother.

God said, "I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn baby and embrace the tears of exhaustion because she knows that she will one day dry her eyes and smile as she reflects on the bonds created through those long nights. I need somebody who can play the same games and sing the same songs every day for hours on end and who has endless uses for cardboard tubes, popsicle sticks, and ice cube trays. Who, during each of her children’s first 18 years, will finish her 40-hour week by Tuesday noon and then, tired but willing, put in the remaining 128 hours." So God made a mother.

God said, "I need somebody strong enough to set reasonable limits and instill self-discipline, yet gentle enough to dry tears and kiss boo-boos and nurture them through their fevers, who will give up her one free hour to snuggle with the child who’s still afraid of the dark."

I need somebody who will be fair and consistent and lead by example. Somebody to share, care, protect, provide, and teach, and learn, and hug, and hold, and give unselfishly, and love unconditionally. Somebody who threads her family together with enduring bonds of unity, who would laugh, and then sigh and then reply with tears of pride when her daughter says that she wants to spend her life doing what Mom does. So God made a mother.

This is a Bigger Picture moment.
Join us today at Brook's place!

Keep the Fire Burning

I poured my Saturday morning coffee and settled into the recliner. Reese was still asleep and Matt had already left to work on the farm. I stared out the window, watching the sun rise over the treetops. In the corner of our yard, two empty lawn chairs faced the stone fire ring. Tiny strands of smoke rose intermittently from the center of the circle, the final remnants of the previous night.

Just ten hours earlier, Matt went outside to light a fire while I put Reese to bed. I waited for the sound of rustling bed sheets to fade away before joining my husband beneath the stars for a much-needed night of reconnection. Pulling our chairs in close, we took turns tossing in empty pizza boxes and pieces of shredded mail. The warmth enveloped us, creating a shield against the chill of the night. The heat pressed into our cheeks, forcing us to inch our chairs backward as we fed the flames. 

Alone in the dark, we reunited with the couple we were seven years ago, before full-time jobs, children, and mortgage payments began chipping away at our time, energy, and patience for each other. With no clock to remind us of the hour, we rekindled past memories, laughing as if we didn't already know the end of each story. We talked late into the night, ignoring our bodies’ pleas for sleep as we fed the flames of our marriage with laughter and simple presence.

Knowing the morning would come all too soon, we finally made our way back to the house. Behind us, the fire began its slow death. We didn’t even bother to fully extinguish the remaining flames. The lack of attention would be enough to seal its fate. Crawling into bed, we snuggled a little closer, held each other a little tighter, kissed a little longer…

Sitting in the recliner just a few hours later, I wondered how I would possibly muster the energy for a full day of toddler mayhem. Regret began crowding my thoughts as I silently scolded myself, you should have gone to bed earlier…

My inner voice suddenly quieted as I watched the fire take its final breaths, completing its descent from a beautiful burning blaze into a lifeless pile of ashes.

Welcome to My World

After over 3 years of renting a small house on the family farm, we have finally decided to hire a realtor and start house hunting. Although we aren't in a huge hurry to pack our bags and we plan to take our time with the process, it is possible that this was our last summer in this house. And as excited as we are to finally have a place to call our own, we're sad to leave the house where we started our lives together. So in honor of our little town and our tiny farmhouse, here is a snapshot of life on the farm....

If you travel toward the southern end of Interstate 39 in central Illinois, you will pass a small town with no stop lights, no restaurants, and no buildings over 2 stories tall. If you venture down the off ramp, you'll see the bank with one drive-up window and the Casey's General Store where the local farmers get their morning coffee. If you make your way out of town, you'll see miles upon miles of corn and soybean fields. Somewhere among those fields is a little yellow farmhouse with chickens roaming in the yard and a barefoot toddler pushing a stuffed bunny in a miniature stroller. Welcome to my world.

I say that we are farmers, but really it's my in-laws who farm full-time, although Matt does work in the field part-time during the busy times of planting and harvesting.  His parents live in the next house down from us (about a half mile down the road), and his grandma lives in the next house after them. Now, I'm sure you're probably feeling sorry for me for having to live so close to my in-laws, but there are some definite perks - like when Reese was a newborn and Matt's mom would come down just so I could take a shower and start dinner or when having an evening alone is as easy as running the baby next door.

On most mornings, Reese and I head out to play in the yard and I see my father-in-law working out by the machine shed. We wander over to say hi and Reese pretends to drive the tractor. Then we continue up the gravel path toward the chicken house. As soon as the chickens see us they all come running and Reese feeds them our produce and bread scraps from the day before. Then we head back toward the house where I push her in the swing or take her for a ride in the wagon around the edge of the property (which makes up for the days when I skip my workout).  

In the 6 years since I've been with Matt, I've participated in a lot of activities that only happen when you live in a place like this. In the spring we raise a new batch of chickens to butcher, and yes I have participated in the "annual chicken slaughter" where we kill, bag, and freeze about 60 chickens, which means I never buy chicken (or eggs) at the store. It's a big family assembly line (or I should say dis-assembly line), and I love knowing that our meat isn't pumped with hormones or poorly treated (which is well worth a couple days of chicken guts on my hands).

In late summer we harvest the sweet corn at its peak of freshness and we shuck, blanch, and freeze enough corn to last all 3 of our families (us, Matt's parents, and his sister's family) until the next sweet corn season. In the fall, I pick apples from the trees in the yard and I freeze a year's supply of apple sauce and pie filling. The harvest season is usually finished just in time for Matt to get all of his friends together to hunt on his family's property. We usually count on Matt killing at least one deer to supply us with ground meat for the year (deer is incredibly lean and much healthier than beef).   
 
By far though, my favorite thing about living in the country is the separation from the rest of the world. Time just seems to slow down out here (even for someone like me). We don't hear sirens or horns or trains at our house. We hear birds and crickets and motorcycles on leisurely rides. When I stare off into the distance and see only the blue sky and green fields, I find it easier to forget my troubles, quiet my mind, and spend a few minutes with God. Although it can be tough to drive 20 minutes to the next decent-sized town (you don't make a "quick run to the store" out here) and I don't have a lot of neighbors to keep me company during the day, it's well worth the trade-off to be able to roast marshmallows and hot dogs over a bonfire or to sit on the patio with no other houses in sight or to look up at a clear night sky and see every single star. Some people call it the boring-middle-of-nowhere-boondocks. I call it home.