Dusty Roads to the Heart

The sun was shining in the dark blue Kansas skies. The day was a calm, beautiful 56 degrees. A flock of geese flew over head making their way south. A cow mooed off in the distance. All was still. All that was left of four beautiful days were the memories. The little ghosts dancing and talking all around us. "Good bye Grandpa"  "Come give Grandma a hug."  "Where is K. Grandpa?"  "We have to go now kids."   "Did you go to the bathroom?"   "Go in and take one more look around to make sure you have everything."  "Can we take a little bag of Lucky Charms for a snack Grandma?"  All these little commands were sounding around me as I stood there watching our six little people be loaded into the cars.  One was going east, and the other heading west. Leaving Grandpa and me here on the farm alone once more. As we stood together there on the porch, first the white car backed up and pulled slowly out of the drive way, little...

Sometimes it can take years to find real happiness within yourself. Sometimes it takes some hard blows to find pure happiness. Sometimes it takes walking beside someone to teach you the meaning of the words you speck. Sometimes it takes sharing in someone else's heartbreak, to teach you that silence and a arm around the shoulder, is the best thing. It is the heart felt happiness. It is the happiness that fills the soul and reaches on and on and on. It is the pure happiness that comes to help you with the experiences that life throws at you. We can be happy. But I have learned through life's experiences, what really gives me true happiness.  The other day my daughter gave me some words of wisdom. She said to me; "Mom you have to learn that you can't depend on someone else for happiness, you have to find it within yourself. Until then you will never know true happiness." A year ago last November, I walked into a small nursing home room of a dear gray haired ma...

A hot bubbly bath. The lights low. Soft music. All the days cares drift out of your mind, your heart, and in their place starts to bud the beginning of a new post for my blog. Thoughts start to grow deep in my heart, so I sit at my computer and share them with you. My mind can create many different types of thoughts. Then those thoughts affect my heart. I compare them with the weather sometimes. Have you ever noticed how the weather can be one extreme and then change to the opposite in the same day? Let me give you some examples. It is a hot, muggy early July day on the farm. The sun is beating down. Not a leaf is moving on the trees. It is so muggy, a person can hardly breath. Sweat drips from your forehead and it runs like a river down your back. In the late afternoon you notice a cloud in the southwest. It lays low on the horizon. The trees still stand quiet, and still. There is an eerie feeling in the air. It feels like the day is holding its breath, as that cloud starts to c...

The holiday seasons are once again upon us. This year I know the true meaning that they hold.  This year I know how to be truly happy during this season . This year I know that happiness doesn't come wrapped in beautiful paper with bows. It doesn't come in turkey around the table. It doesn't come sitting in front of the fireplace.  These things do bring happiness, don't get me wrong. It is just that these things mean more to me this year because of a friend I ran into a couple years ago. She took me to the other side of the holidays. She told me her story on how she became truly happy. So sit back and enjoy as I share her story with you. As we take you to the other side of the holidays. It was the day before Thanksgiving.  As she made her way into town, down Crawford street, and onto First, she was noticing the red, blue, white Christmas lights hanging in the small trees that lined the streets. She was heading to a little simple duplex where he...

Do you know what you did for me... that day? Do you know what your friendly smile did for me...that day? Do you know what you did for me when you walked just a little ways out of your way and called me by name, asking "How's your day going my friend?" No....I don't think you did. I know that you didn't. I know because we were strangers really. We had only meant one afternoon when you were eating your lunch at Morrison House where you stayed while your friend was in the hospital. I happened to be volunteering that afternoon. As you ate along with two other families, you shared your friends story with us. The other families shared their stories, and a friendship must of evolved between us. A friendship that caused you to reach out to me when my world was tumbling down around me. "That day" I was working in the surgery family room. I was secretly having a stressful afternoon. My heart was aching and I was feeling a bit on edge. I was smiling, but insi...

Her cell phone jingled, breaking into the silence of her living room.  She grabbed it and read his name across the top. "Hello" she whispered into it as she held it close to her ear. "Hi honey....we made it." She heard him say at the other end, sending her mind and heart traveling back in time to the two story farm house of her childhood. Her mind traveled back some forty plus years ago to that kitchen table where she sat surrounded by her dad, mom, sisters and little brother. She had just got a "boyfriend."  It was the talk of the family. Her family. They were so happy for her. He was so "special". There at that table that night of long ago, her dad sat slightly bent over, quietly spooning the potato soup into his mouth, as he listened to the chatter and chuckles of the kids and mom, as they talked about their day. She sat there half listening to the chatter, half listening for the ringing of the telephone that sat on the desk just aro...

This morning I reached for the roast beef, and lifted it out of its package, and placed it in the hot electric skillet. As it sizzled away, I noticed my finger tips. They were sticky. I looked down at them and they were red with the blood from that roast. I stood there at the kitchen counter, squeezing them together. Opening them, then shutting them together. As I worked them back and forth, my mind traveled to two special words in the English vocabulary.  Heart and Love. When I stood there at the kitchen sink, looking at my finger tips, covered with that blood, I thought of sacrifice. Then I thought of the heart. Then of that beautiful word love. To me blood specks of sacrifice. When I think of sacrifice I think of pure love flowing from the heart. But this morning I thought of something else. As I looked at MY finger tips. covered with blood, I started to remember some very special personal sacrifices given just for me.  I thought tha...

Dear Dad, Yesterday Stan and I drove up to see you.  You didn't know we were there. You were just sleeping away. We sat beside you for awhile, holding your tiny hands, and whispering that we loved you into your ears. But you just laid there sleeping. It was time for us to go home, but we had to eat some ice cream together in that little ice cream parlor down the hall that you would go to every evening. I asked if it would be ok if I stayed with you for just a little while. For some reason I just wanted to sit beside you, alone, for just a little while. I pulled my chair up beside the bed and took hold of your wrinkled hand. I just sat there, quietly looking into your face.  I began to hum softly to you, and a complete peace came over my mind, my heart, my very being. You just laid there asleep. I just sat there humming softly to myself. It felt so peaceful. It was as if your spirit deep within you was r...

"Where shall I flee for refuge, Hiding when storms are near? Where find a place of safety Dwelling without a fear?" "Jesus alone can save me, All of my joys increase; From every storm He'll shield me, Giving my soul sweet peace." Early this morning I got up and took a walk. The sun wasn't even awake yet. I wanted to start before the eastern sky turned to its pinks, yellows, and golds.  I wanted to watch as God woke up His brand new day. The new day He gave to me. I walked up the road for a little bit, then turned in at the pasture gate. I wanted to get as far away from "life" as I could. I didn't want to hear the rooster crow, or the cars on the highway, or the noise of the oil well. I didn't want to see the machinery that would remind me that there is work to be done. I didn't want to hear or see anything. I wanted to just be alone. Alone among the tall pasture grasses, the old barb wire fence, the hedge post, leaning to th...

Yesterday was a beautiful day here on the farm. Early afternoon I was hanging a load of cloths on the line in the back yard. I had just taken a bath towel out of the basket setting at my feet, when a little plane flew over head, up there in that big dark blue sky. I listened as it grew fainter and fainter until it was gone off into the big blue beyond. I stood there, with that towel in my hand and the cloth pin in my mouth. Standing there, looking off into the distance, and my mind went back to my childhood.  I stood there remembering all those little noises that would bring peace to my mind, my heart. They still do today, when I once again visit those days of yesteryear. I can picture my mother telling us girls that hot summer afternoon, of long ago, "I want you to take a little nap now. You will feel so much better."  We complained of course. What little girls wanted to waste a perfectly good afternoon taking a nap, especially if they could play house...

Well it is a beautiful Saturday morning here on the farm. The sun is bright in the big blue sky, the windows are open and the birds are filling the air with their happy songs. I should be working! My house is a total disaster, the yard needs mowed and the poor flower beds are more like weed beds, but I find myself once again at my computer.  I have soft music playing in the background and my heart is happy. Pure happiness.  In my situation it feels wonderful because this type of happiness has been slow coming to my heart, my soul, my mind. I know that there will be days that I feel just the opposite, but I will just remember that those days are passing. Really they need to come. They are "teachers" to me. They help me appreciate life and the real meaning of life. They help me to know that I'm on a journey and there will be rough waters and there will be smooth. But today I must send out some thank you notes that are way overdo. Sometimes we get our greatest hel...

Walking down memories lane, hand in hand, side by side.  This is what I did in my book   "Little by Little...Side by Side."  Well the last chapter has been written and published and now it is time to say good bye from our little farm down here by the creek. I have to say that it has been very beneficial for me to go back in time and write these chapters. I am  a little surprised  it took me a year to do so, but my heart has fell in love all over again, for those good old neighbors, the doctors and Mr. Hanson, the pharmacist, the old hardware store and the country time elevator. My heart fell in love all over again for Burney, Marsh, and Corky, for Fritz 66, and the train that rumbled through our little hick town, disappearing around the bend and on into the distance. For my cousin Lyle, his little green house, his time at our table, and helping work the cattle. For our old farm truck, with its white hood and blue top, for Grandpa as he...

The farm was a buzz! The day had come. It was August 15, the date on the calendar that we had been working toward ever since that January evening that Peter and Kate told us they were to be married under the big maple in the front yard. Yesterday, late afternoon, family and friends started to arrive, all smiles and excitement.  Someone drove the old farm pickup to town and loaded up the folding chairs out of the city hall. Someone else drove to the rental store to bring home the white lattice arch that would stand under the maple tree.  Peter's sisters, mother, Kate, and I drove up to the school to set up the reception, and put sandwiches, vegetables and fruit in the refrigerator. Jen, Peter's sister, had taken the huge responsibility of coordinating and catering the reception into her hands. And she was doing a great job of it! Peter's dad drove to town for the tuxes and also brought out pizzas for us all. Later that evening, Bret and Emma completed the famil...

It was late January.  It was one of those "stay inside" days. The temperature was a cold 27 degrees and cloudy. Mark and I had just finished giving shots to four litters of pigs. "I think that I'll spend the afternoon cleaning the house. It is really needing it," I said walking to the front room and putting away my coat, gloves, and scarf. "What are you going to do the rest of the afternoon?" "I need to grind a couple loads of hog feed. The fats are pretty close to out," Mark answered, washing out the syringe and putting it back into the drawer. "Okay, just make sure you remember to come in if you need to warm up," I said to him as he walked out into the cold. I loaded up a bucket of disinfectant, furniture polish, a rag and soft scrub, and headed to the basement. I hadn't cleaned down here for at least a month and it sounded like both Kate and Peter would be home in a couple weeks. I opened the closet door in Kate's...