Thankfulness

from http://www.simplyvintagegirl.com/blog/

Saying thank you to God can be a complicated undertaking.
We cannot find the good without some disciplined thought.
We have unmet demands. We have disappointments.
Nothing proceeds according to schedule.
Is it His fault? Did He fail us?
Perhaps.
Or
Perhaps we haven't the right to plan. Not here or now.
Perhaps that act breaks the unwritten rules of the universe.
Perhaps He doesn't listen to our pleading. It has already been ordained.
Perhaps our desperate cries in the dark of night are an anxious waste of breath.
Perhaps He is busy. It is a big universe and we are very small and almost totally inconsequential.
Or
Perhaps we are very important and we have lessons to learn that only a hollow no will teach us.

Perhaps that's it.
That's where I land when I hopscotch myself to the end of the chalky squares.

Perhaps I am very loved, and perhaps there is a plan.
Perhaps it isn't as random or existential as it looks.
Perhaps unsought lessons will be learned, and perhaps I will be perceptibly changed,
and perhaps all will be well in the end.

Like a bride beautiful in her white gown, I will enter and see my groom at the altar,
smiling at me, with a ring in his pocket, and love in his eyes and devotion in his heart and
scars from battles he has fought for my hand.
And that is when I will live happily
for ever after.
Forever.

Perhaps I can thank Him for the promise of that day.
Perhaps thankful doesn't even begin to say it.

My New Blog: Dragonfly Ranch

Two years ago, in the midst of our grieving, my husband had a desperate need to get out of the city. He kinda dragged me to this broken down house in the country. I didn't want to go, being very content in my nice little house in my nice little neighborhood, with my nice sidewalks and friendly neighbors. Eleven acres with no neighbors really held no attraction. But he needed a project, and being a good wife, I went along. Project is the understatement. We bought our own little money pit, but it's been so good for us, mentally, physically and spiritually. I started reluctantly, and still resist occasionally, but mostly it's opened a new chapter in my life. I decided I needed a new blog to chronicle this interesting journey. I am leaving the sad stuff here on this blog, and devoting the new blog to the charms and challenges of country living. I hope you can join me there, too.

Dragonflyranchgirl.blogspot.com

Hurricane Sandy

 

This is the worst of it for us...flooding all  around the house, and the road leading to our house was flooded like a river. It is receding today. We had to pump water out of our crawl space under the house, and  my husband's office in the barn also got flooded from rain collecting outside, then pouring in at the floor board level. He's ripped out his floor and is drying the place out. Water in the barn is a whole lot easier to deal with than water in the house, so we are thankful for our dry house. After seeing what those north of us are dealing with, we have utterly no complaints.
We are very glad it's over.

Thanks for the support and prayers. Hope you are all warm, dry and cozy on the day after the Superstorm. 

Double Birthdays

We are loaded with family celebrations in the Fall. Two granddaughters have the same birthday two years apart. 

With my daughters--my cherished friends and beautiful mothers to my five grandchildren.

Teppanyaki rules!

Aww, a heart-shaped pile of rice. Can't get much sweeter than that.

Except fire. Food on fire is exciting. 

The guys at the other end of the table look positively captivated.

The birthday song with taiko drums.  A blend of East and West.  

The birthday girls take it all in. 

Applause. 

Presents. 

A long-desired ukulele from Hawaii. Yeah. 

Mama and birthday girls. Mama's birthday is on its way, too.

All the single ladies plus two. 

The extreme guitar pose. No shame.  Straight ham.  

I love these ladies.

Big Birthday in the Barn

Barn preps underway. Big moment coming.

Izzy turned 13. She and 19 of her friends  took over our farm for 24 hours.  

With pizza on pretty plates,

and sweets and Krispy Kreme donuts for breakfast. A junk food festival.

An amazing centerpiece made by Aunty Crystal.

 Sparkly mirror balls to go with the beat from the ipods.

All theirs for the night.

Picture time, and here they are, trying to give us a Rockette's arm roll.

Enjoying posing for the cameras.

For Izzy, it's been a long wait to become a teenager. When you have the late birthday and all your friends have already passed over the line from childhood to "all grown up now", it deserves a big celebration.

Cute as kittens.

 
Darling girls.
All 19 of them eventually showed up and stayed.
Maybe the largest sleepover I've ever been party to.

Savoring the moment, another pic of them surrounding the Birthday Girl.

One more pose and then to the pond and jacuzzi.
They sort of acted like they were college girls--- but with soda and bedtimes and numerous chaperones.

I have such mixed feelings about them growing up. But I can't stop time, so on it rolls, taking my grandchildren with it.

Good Advice

I think this is the original poster hanging in a British museum. It's from the 1939 British government campaign to lift morale as Hitler marched across Europe. It was only rediscovered in 2000 and you've likely seen it reproduced everywhere-- in all shapes, sizes and sentiments. It was a war-time admonition to the British public to not get swept away by fear, but to press on with the normal responsibilities of life as much as possible. The more things change, the more necessary stability becomes. With a war waging, it was essential that people face it with courage and keep the country running. Everything depended on that response.

When my beautiful friend Melissa took her life in July, it knocked our world off its tracks.  All the carefully set game board pieces went up in the air, and landed on the ground in disarray. Putting it all together again is requiring more intense effort and insight than I could have imagined.

For one thing, I feel jumpy inside. The scene keeps replaying. The questions keep coming. I keep playing detective trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. I am skittish with it, nervous, but compelled to replay it. Do answers make me feel any better? Not at all. Does that stop me? Not in the least.

For another thing, I am tired. I am world weary. I shrink from it: "This can't have happened. No." Another deep sorrow. Another huge loss, which spreads in many directions.  Deep disappointments. So many human failures in this whole thing, including mine. Is there no limit to how low life can go?  Apparently not.

And finally, there's the change. There are so many repercussions to this final act by my friend. Nothing, nothing is the same. Nothing. Grasping for the familiar is an exercise in futility. The familiar is gone. Everything has changed. No one who knew her looks the same now. The shadow of her absence is on all our faces. Our church is disoriented. People look hollow. The air has gone out of our sails. The beauty has gone out of the changing season. The Fall traditions seem like too much trouble. Her family and friends are longing for her, wishing her here, and facing the reality of never seeing her again in this life. It's a stunner.

Probably not unlike seeing beautiful, stately London bombed out by a maniac, loved ones in a battle from which they may not return, imminent danger on every continent,  and at home, food and energy and commodity shortages that unravel every day life.

Keep calm and carry on. It's become my watch word, a compass point in the storm.  Change is chaotic. It is unsettling. It is unnerving. It leaves few options.  It requires me to leave an older secure way of doing things, and to reluctantly move on to the new that is not of my choice or making. It requires letting go of cherished things with a silent grief  in the daily process. It requires me to do things I don't know how to do.  There is a learning curve and failures daily. Trial and error. Trip and fall. Depression, discouragement, and dread.

But I have learned that it can be done. It must be done. There are children watching who need hope.

Keep calm and carry on. It's the only sensible thing to do right now.

Isaiah 30:21

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

Walk to the Back Bay

Papa and Aidan and Cody (and me) take a walk down the street.

They are so cute! We live next door to a National Wildlife Refuge and frequently make the walk to the end of the road to check things out.

Parts of it are not open to the public, just to the critters. Apparently the critters won't make babies if too many people are poking their heads in. We are glad to cooperate and stay out of their way.

But if you walk down our road, there are beautiful things to see. It changes with the seasons.
These grasses are called phragmites and they are everywhere in the marshes by the end of the summer, weighted down by their heavy heads.

Pickerel Rush grows in the marshes, too, and blooms in the summer.

The butterflies love these flowers. 

This black swallowtail is  flitting from flower to flower. 

It's a beautiful creature. 

I love the purple flowers. 

This is the Back Bay. It's a large body of water edged by a narrow strip of land across from us that keeps out the Atlantic ocean. The land on the other shore is the northernmost portion of the famous strip of land known as the Outer Banks. It looks like a line in these pictures. 

If you were to drive South on that little strip of land you would be in North Carolina. They don't let you do that, though. It's a bird sanctuary. 

I guess a spider sanctuary too. 

See that line on the horizon. Yup, the northern Outer Banks. We call it Sandbridge.  

They close the Back Bay in winter, but we pedestrians who live on this street are able to slide in beside the poles and stay a while. 

And then walk home again. 

Back in the house, I sit in my chair and take a shot of my gorgeous roses. These are the dribs and drabs of my summer roses. So gorgeous on my cluttered table next to my favorite leather chair.  My spot. 

The Back Bay is beautiful and all, but nothing thrills me like fresh flowers. Nothing.  

Psalm 24:1
 The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.