Evolution

This morning, try as I may, my 1978 Sealy Posturepedic was putting up a pretty good fight to hold me down. I gave in and laid there an extra hour. My bed isn't exactly what you would call the most comfortable but it serves it's purpose. It's what you would call a "Country King", 2 twin's pushed together with a thick foam pad on top. You can still easily distinguish the line down the middle and before the thick foam pad we added last year, I actually fell thru the middle. Stan came to the rescue and with his favorite repair tool (actually his 2nd favorite...duct tape is forever 1st), he bound the mattress tops together with his limitless supply of used hay bale twine. My hero!!! Yes, the bed isn't our favorite but I like the company I keep there. Our cats, our dog, all our grandkids, me, my Stanford and our Lexie. Our sweet Lexie has a nightly ritual of coming in for a snug and we tell her to get her "back in the crack" and we settle in, her in the middle, listening to the adventures she had that day. We also listen to Lexie pray sweet and sincerely "Please make it be 68 degrees like the weather guy said and please let Heavenly Father and Jesus have a fun day tomorrow". That simple prayer states volumes of the contents of her heart. She wishes something for everyone in the world and remembers to include God the Father and his son Jesus Christ to receive a little something for themselves after all they have done for us.

I could hear the wind blowing against the house and that wasn't exactly motivation to get up and face another cold day on the farm. Lexie had the magic words to dissolve the spell that the Country King had cast..."Mama, Little Red escaped!!!"

How is it that the horses know when Stan has left the farm and it's just me left to handle runaway horses. Do they talk among themselves as they watch him head down the driveway? I bundled up in my 7 layers of hoodies and coats, grabbed the lead rope, heading thru the dangerously slick and slimy combination of clay mud and horse "pucky" (or as we call it... "mudpucky"). There at the south end of the property was Lexie's Shetland pony. She found herself caught in a small section between 2 fences. I had her cornered, something that horses, especially pony's with a serious case of "short-girl" complex, just don't like. Horses are very sensitive to energy. I was angry and sensing that anger she tried to get away. I'm no "horse whisperer" but I swear, I could actually feel her fear. I stopped myself, took a breath and calmly talked to her. As I looked into her big eyes, I heard her sigh, she resigned to the fate of capture. I already had my hand through the loop in the lead rope and as I slowly stroked her mane I easily slipped the rope over her head. Little Red and I both left our fear on the other side of the barbed wire and I brought her back through the hole in the fence that she had made in her great escape.

I did my best quick fix patch job on the barbed wire using the lead rope to sew the gaping hole together and as I walked back up the slippery slope to the house, I was surprised at my feelings of satisfaction and happiness at being able to do all this by myself without screaming and yelling. Could it be that I have evolved?

When I first moved to the farm, I loved the "thought" of being a farm wife. There aren't many challenges that have been presented to me in life that weren't successfully endured. So what could be so hard about working on 10 acres with 7 horses? After all, my motto has always been "I have done so much with so little for so long, I can now do anything with nothing." There have been a few times that the adventure of farm life has been a bit of a challenge, but as Helen Keller put it "Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all".

The gift that 44 years on this earth has given me is that I know myself pretty well by now, the good, the bad and the ugly dark side. The side that I hate to admit is lurking around the corner of the next crisis to rear it's ugly head. Knowing that my usual reaction to fear of the unknown is anger and usually expressed by yelling expletives, in this moment I was able to stop, acknowledge what I felt and do something different. The magic in that one simple lesson could change the world but it is a difficult lesson to master.

After a long day, I welcomed the arrival of another night on the farm. The sun was setting and I finally had a moment to start writing again. I was sitting in my studio and I looked up at my inspiration board above me. The cork board contains an ecclectic collection of pictures, sayings and things I have found that truly resonate with me. On the left there is a sign in big letters "Who I am" and on the right "What I want". I put those there hoping that in my collecting of random tidbits of interest, that my subconscious mind would release some mystical secret and unlock the revelation of what I was supposed to be doing in life and why. Upon looking at the board for the first time in a month I noticed the only portion of cork showing under the "Who I am" and the rest of the board was fully covered. I realized last night that for the first time in my life, I am not merely enduring life but living life full of spirit and purpose. I know exactly what I want because I already have it. As much as it would be great to have a brand new bed, that doesn't matter because I know what I really love is the family who shares time in it with me. My favorite things in life aren't things but are the friends and family that I have been blessed with.

I asked myself how it is that I can know so much about myself without first knowing Who I Am? Then my ah-hah moment came. The words missing on the board were in my heart, I know who I am. I am a strong, intelligent, intuitive, powerfull wife and mother. Even though I haven't always succeeded as the kind of wife or mother that we are all told we should be, I am the daughter of a Heavenly Father who loves me even with all my imperfections. I know what it is to truly be loved and to give love. I know what it is to be the belle of the ball. I've dined with heads of State and a King of a foreign land. I also know the polar opposite of these things. I have had times in my life that the loneliness and isolation of not knowing love had me considering if life was really worth living. I have been so shy and homely that my own best friends were embarrased by my presence. I have received groceries from a food pantry when I had no money to buy my own and have shared the meals I made with those who were homeless. I guess you could say that I have lived a "well rounded" life. I am so grateful that, of all the places in the world that I could have ended up, I found the place that I love most and the place where I belong is with Stan here on this farm. I know who I am. I know what I want and I have tucked my family in and look forward to one more perfect night on our imperfect Country King.