Grateful Acres

  There's just too many things to be faithful to. When I work through our projected school schedule for each fall, I block out sections of our weeks for housekeeping, because there isn't enough time before, during or after a school day.  I have job jars for the kids to select out of daily, and everyone-does-it-every-day items, and there is always much  that stays undone. Sometimes school work is abandoned (by me) so that I can work toward some assemblance of housekeeping order.  I try to be faithful to keeping our house tidy-ish, and clean-ish. Lately I have been laying awake at night processing (okay, stressing) what will be needed academically in the fall, and what some of the kids need even before their next grade level begins. I write out a two-page "academic overview" each summer, packed with ideas and details for each subject for each kiddo. When that is finished I write out a two-page "weekly schoolhouse routine" to allot times and days to make sure i

It's been awhile now, in so many ways. It's been awhile since I felt like the fire-breathing dragon that I am. It's been awhile since the boiling inspiration of lyric and chord came bubbling out. Songwriting and blog writing have laid dormant, and my worshipping hands have settled down at my sides. I've been telling myself that I'm waiting. A few weeks ago husband and I visited a friend's church service, filled with people whose worshipping hands are vivid free, and my heart came welling up. I finally looked down at my own self and saw my atrophy. Like a bird laying still too long, my wings laid down along my sides- torn and tattered and weak from the kind of stillness that is not rest. I let my head hang limp like my wings, and begged the Lord to restore me. I talked through that moment with my husband, and began to see even more ugliness. In my "waiting" I had let bitterness grow. My stillness was not hopeful, expectant rest. I held on to Go

       None of us had previously felt the kind of heat we got last weekend. I woke up on the third day  to the shaded part of the back yard being ten degrees hotter than our living room. In the height of the afternoon, the air measured 115 degrees. I knew there would be some casualties in the garden, and I hoped not in the hen house. All the chickens are fine, but goodness, our blueberries and some gentler greens suffered. I spent one sweaty morning trying to shade the blueberries that were in full sun- they weren't made for heat like that. Our blueberries are made to fruit and harvest completely before the hot, dry days of august. On the last weekend in June, they were full of almost-ripe berries, right on schedule for their abundant July harvest. But then unprecedented circumstances were thrust upon them, and nothing I did prevented those tender berries from scorching and shriveling and souring.    After the baking heat passed, I went out to do my usual rounds. I like to walk the