HEART'S CRY

My husband is getting softer by the year.  On second thought...he has always been a softy but is letting it out more and more. My husband had a tough day taking our middle son to college on Monday.  In fact, he was up the entire night before.  I came home today to find him chasing wasp outside our front door...and worrying. "So what do you think about the college?"  "Do you think he will be o.k.?"  "Will he be back to visit lots?"  "Have we prepared him?"  "Will he make good choices?" "Can we provide for him?"  "Will the boys stay close?" When our first son left home, my boys saw their Dad cry for the first time.  It was absolutely the hardest thing he had ever faced in his life.  This is the second time and it is killing him as well. My husband loves his boys more then life itself.  They are his whole world.  His everything!   He has always been very involved and there for them.  Not perfec...

The drought makes my heart hurt.  I'm too tied to the land to not ache when the heat and lack of rain hardens and destroys crops and grass.   I hurt for the farmers and the ranchers who pin their hopes on the rain.  For those men and women making the tough decisions right now in deciding what to cull and sell.  How do they keep their pride and joy and livelihood upright and healthy during times of heat stress and dwindling grass and water?  The decisions facing these folks is heart wrenching.  My prayers go to my sisters' families and to my friends. In my own little herd, I see the effects.  Our hay bales have doubled in price since bringing the horses here.  They spend their day huddled in the barn escaping the sun and fighting flies.   Tough decisions need to be made. This summer has driven me to rethink my yard and I'm excited to do some hardscaping and implement some new plans to make it more efficient and use less...

What is so bad about truth?  You know the kind of truth that isn't subject or relative to my feelings or my experiences.  The truth that recognizes that God is God and I am not.   Truth defines us and sets us free.  Truth allows us to take the Truth of God's Word as it is.   Allowing the Word to say what the Word will say.   Then taking that Word INTO our experiences and then Back to the Word! If my life's believes, values and faith was based on  my feelings, experiences and reality then it would become a dynamic  moving target!  I have enough change in the rest of my life.  I need a solid place to stand. Enmeshment leads to mental illness and dysfunction in our lives.  We can become so wrapped in the truth and reality of everyone around us that we don't even know who we are.  Psychological we become fragmented and broken.   So we learn boundaries and we build them in order to...

My reading list for the summer was anything C.S. Lewis.  And I've made it...through one of his books.  "The Abolition of Man," in which Lewis reflects on education, society, and nature.   He "challenges our notions about how to best teach our children-and ourselves-not merely reading and writing, but also a sense of morality." If you are an educator, then this is a book to wrestle with!  In fact, please read this book and share with me your thoughts and understanding of it.   My husband says that until we really wrestle with something then we don't really understand it deeply.  I've wrestled and I'm not sure I understand it deeply. What I do know is that we have to be very careful as educators, parents, and community leaders to teach and not to condition them.  To wrestle and think things through! "Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost.  But you can...

I get emotional at the oddest times.   Today while I changed the water and my middle son came out and we checked out his pickup to see if the totes we bought were just the right size.   When we gabbed over the truck bed leaned on the sides like a couple of old farmers.   When he took off his hat and leaned his head to me for his obligatory kiss and actually smiled about it.   When his pickup backed up and drove down our street. These are the times where I wonder if my heart will be yanked out from its place.  My husband smiles knowingly.  "Are you crying?  Why?"  How do I answer that?  "I'm just emotional," I explain.  Knowing he is facing his own emotions during this time of our second son leaving for college, is comforting to me.  Even though I don't make any sense to any of them! "Well baby," I say assuredly, "we get to begin again."  Not everyone gets that chance.  We t...

  http://daniellehelzer.blogspot.com/2012/07/if-i-should-have-son.html     "If I should have a son I will be sure he knows we will always be here. His dad and I will not leave him like so many parents do. We will stay and remain firm, and though we won’t have all the right answers and make all the right choices, he will know we love him. And later, much later, he’ll want the same for his own family. I’ll teach him that he was divinely and wonderfully created, and though he was adopted, his momma loved him more than words. She loved him so much she made the difficult choice to grow him and then give him to us so he could have all he needed. I’ll let him ask questions about her. And I’ll work to keep her involved in his life, and I’ll be sure he knows that she is his mom just like I am his mom. I will teach him that to be strong does not not require hours in the weightroom; instead it requires openness to feel, to respond, to engage,to love, and to stand firm on h...

Yesterday began like every Sunday, sitting on our "rug" in Children's Church surrounded by kids.  So perfect. Kids are so honest and just are who they are. I was teaching that God is All Powerful and has always been.  "He didn't have a birth," I said.  One little boy said, "Yes He did.  He had a birthday at Christmas!"  I love thinking kids! When I reminded them that God is loving and wants every single one of us to be His children and to live in our hearts.  With the sincerity and honesty that only a child can have; a little girl looked at me and said, "I want Him in my heart.  I want to be His little girl." So I showed them physically what God wants to do spiritually...knock at our heart's door and ask to come and live with us.   The big church probably wondered why I kept knocking at the door!  I opened the door and the kids said, "Come on in Jesus and hang out with us!"  What a God we serve that put all...

According to my new book, "Permaculture" by Sepp Helzer, "permaculture is designed so that all of the plants and animals living there will work in harmony with each other."  He continues that one has to "make proper use of the available natural resources we have to work with nature and not against it.  Using what we have.   One cornerstone of permaculture is the use of terraces in the landscape to prevent erosion and provide structure and support for growth. In my little yard, I use these concepts heavily.  It allows me to use every spot as efficiently as possible.  Provides support for those new plants and allows me to rotate throughout the growing season.  I can't wait to add more! In so many ways nature teaches us about the order and way that God set things in motion.  For example, plants do better with a partner and in a family. The older plants provide protection until the young ones are strong.  Soon those young ones ar...

Customer service is a way of being and not simply a way of doing.  It stems from a servant's heart in my opinion.   Think about it.   The people that I would hold up as a standard of customer service are also the most unselfish, serving and humble and positive people I know.  People who go above and beyond the call of duty and who put other people and their needs in front of themselves. A discussion on our local radio station prompted this train of thought this afternoon.  So if I were queen of my town and in charge of economic development, commerce, marketing and city management I would do the following. Assembly a team of doers.  Real people who live, breath and do service in our community.  Those who live it.  I would pick the front line people, buy them a nice supper and brainstorm. I would ask their beliefs about people and service.  Make a list of their mentors, coaches and friends whom they have learne...

Had a moment of pouting yesterday bemoaning the speed of summer.  It went something like this... "I haven't been able to do anything fun with the boys."  "All we have done is work."  "Summer is almost over."  It was pathetic.  Sounded like this...   Wah.. wah wah... wah wa... Summer has blown by as quickly and as uncontrollably as the hot summer Nebraska winds, picking up my life tossing it upside down like my patio furniture cushions.  And yet...it has been a wonderful summer with our evenings spent talking and relaxing.  Coffee before work with my husband and boys.  The doors are open and the water going on the garden. Coming home at night, eating together, reading and movies and snuggling.  Jazz music from my husband's IPOD, sounds from a movie in the troll hole or the sounds of cicada's singing us to sleep make our evenings complete. The routine.  The daily.  These are the most beautiful sig...

Joy for Beginnings was recommended to me by my sister-in-law for our email book club.    Erica Bauermeister has written this book just for me for this time of my life.   Reading it left me inspired, grieving, joyful, hopeful, sad and reflective.  The women in this book span the spectrum; young and old, rich, poor, grieving, celebrating tied together and standing on the brink of new beginnings in their lives. Anyone who knows me has heard about this book or that book that I think is awesome and should be read. This is "a book you should read" as soon as possible.   Before fall's hand drives us back into our winter activities.   Take the time sisters to turn the soil in our minds and hearts without thought to our roles and the hats we wear.   Providing oxygen to those dreams and Cries of our Heart giving them a chance to grow.

When does dynamic intimate relationship cross the line to manufactured?  How does the invented, formed and re-created turn into an assembly line product?   This week my thoughts have turned to my spiritual life or rather lack thereof.  It is as if somewhere along the line I have put my spiritual life on auto pilot.   Set it on the assembly line.  Packed it into the storage room. Slowly methodically and surely...my spiritual life has become manufactured. Something to tinker with. To set on a shelf. To dust off and remember the "good ole days." Oh trust me...I've tried a tune up.  Mornings are spent pulling on the motor attempting to get it started.   Walking around it shaking my head as I try to figure out what is wrong leaves me frustrated and confused. I kick it.   Shake it.   Tell it.   Still no movement. Dear God:  This once vibrant spiritual life th...

Absorption is critical to growing. The Midwest has been hot and dry.  Ringing out our sandy soil like a sponge squeezed out and left to dry.  The sponge becomes so dry sitting on the side of the sink that it has to be moistened to make it usable.  Have you ever placed a dry sponge on a spot of water?  It sits like a dry crusty boat on top of the water.  A wet sponge absorbs so much better. My vertical potatoes ran water through it like a sieve instead of a sponge.  Raised beds and flowers are in stress mode.  Holding on to all that they can.  It is not time to fertilize or kill weeds.  It's time to water.  A great soaking water.  I make the rounds allowing water to soak deep into the soil several times during a watering.   A bird watching me must shake its head wondering why the chubby girl with the hose keeps walking in circles.  So I water at A until I get to G and then begin at A again to allow the so...

It's your story.  Tell it. Life is one giant narrative.  A story.  A complete book of precious literature containing our history, letters, poetry, songs, dreams and lessons to learn. Our stories bind us to our past and to our future.  Shape our relationships, communication and our work.  Mold our children and our legacy.  Stories bring healing, restoration, hope and unity in our humanity.  Hope. Courage.  Character.  Values and Beliefs are passed from generation to generation tying the ages together in one delicate web. Our story is etched in deeply grooved lines within our very souls.  Told by our countenance, our words and our actions. From our youngest to our oldest...we have stories that need to be told.  Each person around us longs for us to take the time to ask questions and listen.  To sincerely want and desire to know us through our stores.  To know that our lives will live on in the memories of o...

Thanking God tonight for a country where I can sit at my church and watch a fireworks show to celebrate a country that began with a simple declaration.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." I believe that every man, woman and child in the world should have the freedom along with the responsibility to live their lives to the fullest...to seek life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  To fail.  To succeed.  To make decisions.  To believe.  To not believe.  To dream.   In fact, I know that when God created this world He created us all free and equal.  Free to obey or free to walk away.  Free to love or free to hate....

  The people I love the best jump into work head first without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half-submerged balls. I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart, who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience, who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward, who do what has to be done, again and again. I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put i...