Grateful Acres

This morning I felt some things stir in my heart that I hope to carefully articulate, with honor and honesty. This year our life took a sudden left turn. With a whisper of the Lord's leading, we uprooted and painfully left behind years of kingdom investment. We left the ground we had sown and tended, just as the harvest seemed to be near. We surrendered big dreams and big plans to the Lord, and He gave them away. As I'm writing, I have my favorite album from my favorite artist blasting... Brave New World by Amanda Cook. Fitting, right? She writes about the character of this enormous God. Her lyrics weave the waves of His mercy, His steadiness, His goodness. She wanders through tides of revelation after revelation of His magnificence. Her lyrics are surrender and rising as one. This album is important to me for so many reasons, but today's reason is just that- surrender and rising. Surrender AND rising. With the Lord, surrender is not defeat. When we find ours...

Part of me has always been drawn to old things. My mom and I like to go antiquing together. Family heirlooms capture my attention, particularly items from a ranch house belonging to generations past; a real ranch house, with cows and butter-churns and the like. My great grandparents were Wyoming ranchers, and as a child I remember marveling at the worn, weathered items that survived those hard, rich years. I still have a leather suitcase that my Great Grandpa strapped to the top of a stage coach when he traveled across the wild west. His name is ascribed inside in real ink and poorman's cursive. I've been on a bit of a symbolic heart-and-house purge for a good long season now, longing for a simple, almost old-fashioned life. The simple, hard-working life, less clutter, less busy-ness, more things that stand the test of time. I think about what my kids' memories will be... will they remember Mama stressed and bustling, will they remember being rushed out the door, ...