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 climb higher into the sky. Its got a greenish, black color and soon you hear a constant low rumble, and see a flash of lightening. The wind starts to pick up and the temperature starts to drop, and the sun disappears from sight.
All of a sudden it is upon you. The thunder starts to bang, there is a constant flashing of lightening. The rain pours down out of the heavens, and the wind beats it against the windows. There is a constant rumble and then all of a sudden the hail starts. Pang...pang... pang...it hits against the house, then bounces on the ground, coming to rest against the tree trunk.
The clouds move in all different directions up there in the sky, turning and twisting. The hail mixed with rain continues to beat down. Then as fast as it started, it moves on to the east. You stand at the window looking out. You can't take in the beauty around you. Just below the clouds, in the western sky, the sun pops its face out as it sets. It turns the cottonwoods a golden yellow. The storm clouds are a dark blue in the eastern skies. The storm has passed. The sun is shining again.
Lets take a trip to the farm in the dead of winter.
As you come into the house after the chores are done for the night, a snow flake starts to fall. Then two, then more and more. You raise your face to the sky, stick out your tongue to catch one of those cold white flakes. You stand there letting them fall silently to the ground around you.
Sometime in the middle of the night the wind picks up and you can hear the snow hitting against the bedroom window. The wind howls around the corners of the house. That snow storm has hit. You walk to the window and look out. Against the vapor light you see tiny snow flakes whirling around and around before they make their way to the ground. There is frost creeping up in the window pane and you shudder, and then turn and walk back to your bed and climb deep under the covers. What will it be like tomorrow morning when we get up? Will we have to scoop the bunks before we feed the calves up on the hill? I'm sure we will, I think as I drift off to sleep.
Oh my!! What a picture meets us as we open the back door and look out into the new day. The sun was shining. The air was crisp and cold. Our breath came in little puffs of smoke. Oh but the snow. We just stand there in the quiet, taking it all in. Neither one of us wants to make the first foot print in that beautiful white glistening snow that lays in drifts on the deck and out in the yard. And oh how quiet. It is as if the whole earth is holding its breath.
Stan makes the first foot step and I follow. The snow crunches beneath our boots as we make our way through the drifts to the machine shed. We take in the fresh cold air. Our eyes sting with the cold. Our noses drip. Our finger tips get cold in the heavy gloves. Everything is white and glistening. Everything is covered up. You cannot see any dirt, you cannot see any flaws. Everything is snow white and beautiful. Everything is quiet and all you can hear is the crunching of our footsteps. It is a perfect world, under that fresh fallen snow.
Let me tell you about something that happened just the other day here on the farm. It was a lesson to me.
We are feeding the steers and heifers up on the hill. We have fence line feeding bunks, where Stan drives the tractor and wagon, putting silage into each bunk. Then the calves come up and stick their heads through the fence and eat to their hearts content.
Well one morning last week, after Stan had fed, it started to rain. It rained most of the day and by night those bunks were a mess. There was wet, heavy uneaten silage mixed with water in every one. We didn't want to waste all the feed, so Stan told me that we would just move the silage up on the sides and then dip the water out with a five gallon bucket.
After doing that to about ten bunks, a persons back starts to say "I've had enough", but there is still six more to go! So I just stood there watching my hubby as he patiently finished the job. I just stood there shaking my head. Those bunks were a disaster. Wet hay all over the sides, dirty water in the bottom, dents on the sides so you couldn't fit the bucket down there very well. But still my hubby worked, as about a hundred, 650 pound calves stood there watching him. They were wanting their food, and now, but my husband just calmly kept throwing out that dirty water, until he came to the last bunk.
I asked him. "Does these kind of days get you discouraged." He just looked up at me, his nose dripping, and said "It's all in a days work." I looked around at those calves standing there waiting....and I thought to myself.....
"Now wouldn't it be grand if I could be like my husband in life. If I could remember that others are looking on as I face what life throws at me. Wouldn't it be grand if I could show sunshine after a storm, or stillness of soul, in the midst of a storm. Wouldn't it be grand if I could do my task without grumbling, instead knowing it is my privilege. Wouldn't it be grand if my spirit could glisten and my actions could cover up the flaws of another, making everything as white as new fallen snow.
So...yes...a person can learn from the storms of life. We can know that behind every cloud the sun is always shining. After every storm....there is the rainbow.
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 climb higher into the sky. Its got a greenish, black color and soon you hear a constant low rumble, and see a flash of lightening. The wind starts to pick up and the temperature starts to drop, and the sun disappears from sight.
All of a sudden it is upon you. The thunder starts to bang, there is a constant flashing of lightening. The rain pours down out of the heavens, and the wind beats it against the windows. There is a constant rumble and then all of a sudden the hail starts. Pang...pang... pang...it hits against the house, then bounces on the ground, coming to rest against the tree trunk.
The clouds move in all different directions up there in the sky, turning and twisting. The hail mixed with rain continues to beat down. Then as fast as it started, it moves on to the east. You stand at the window looking out. You can't take in the beauty around you. Just below the clouds, in the western sky, the sun pops its face out as it sets. It turns the cottonwoods a golden yellow. The storm clouds are a dark blue in the eastern skies. The storm has passed. The sun is shining again.
Lets take a trip to the farm in the dead of winter.
As you come into the house after the chores are done for the night, a snow flake starts to fall. Then two, then more and more. You raise your face to the sky, stick out your tongue to catch one of those cold white flakes. You stand there letting them fall silently to the ground around you.
Sometime in the middle of the night the wind picks up and you can hear the snow hitting against the bedroom window. The wind howls around the corners of the house. That snow storm has hit. You walk to the window and look out. Against the vapor light you see tiny snow flakes whirling around and around before they make their way to the ground. There is frost creeping up in the window pane and you shudder, and then turn and walk back to your bed and climb deep under the covers. What will it be like tomorrow morning when we get up? Will we have to scoop the bunks before we feed the calves up on the hill? I'm sure we will, I think as I drift off to sleep.
Oh my!! What a picture meets us as we open the back door and look out into the new day. The sun was shining. The air was crisp and cold. Our breath came in little puffs of smoke. Oh but the snow. We just stand there in the quiet, taking it all in. Neither one of us wants to make the first foot print in that beautiful white glistening snow that lays in drifts on the deck and out in the yard. And oh how quiet. It is as if the whole earth is holding its breath.
Stan makes the first foot step and I follow. The snow crunches beneath our boots as we make our way through the drifts to the machine shed. We take in the fresh cold air. Our eyes sting with the cold. Our noses drip. Our finger tips get cold in the heavy gloves. Everything is white and glistening. Everything is covered up. You cannot see any dirt, you cannot see any flaws. Everything is snow white and beautiful. Everything is quiet and all you can hear is the crunching of our footsteps. It is a perfect world, under that fresh fallen snow.
Let me tell you about something that happened just the other day here on the farm. It was a lesson to me.
We are feeding the steers and heifers up on the hill. We have fence line feeding bunks, where Stan drives the tractor and wagon, putting silage into each bunk. Then the calves come up and stick their heads through the fence and eat to their hearts content.
Well one morning last week, after Stan had fed, it started to rain. It rained most of the day and by night those bunks were a mess. There was wet, heavy uneaten silage mixed with water in every one. We didn't want to waste all the feed, so Stan told me that we would just move the silage up on the sides and then dip the water out with a five gallon bucket.
After doing that to about ten bunks, a persons back starts to say "I've had enough", but there is still six more to go! So I just stood there watching my hubby as he patiently finished the job. I just stood there shaking my head. Those bunks were a disaster. Wet hay all over the sides, dirty water in the bottom, dents on the sides so you couldn't fit the bucket down there very well. But still my hubby worked, as about a hundred, 650 pound calves stood there watching him. They were wanting their food, and now, but my husband just calmly kept throwing out that dirty water, until he came to the last bunk.
I asked him. "Does these kind of days get you discouraged." He just looked up at me, his nose dripping, and said "It's all in a days work." I looked around at those calves standing there waiting....and I thought to myself.....
"Now wouldn't it be grand if I could be like my husband in life. If I could remember that others are looking on as I face what life throws at me. Wouldn't it be grand if I could show sunshine after a storm, or stillness of soul, in the midst of a storm. Wouldn't it be grand if I could do my task without grumbling, instead knowing it is my privilege. Wouldn't it be grand if my spirit could glisten and my actions could cover up the flaws of another, making everything as white as new fallen snow.
So...yes...a person can learn from the storms of life. We can know that behind every cloud the sun is always shining. After every storm....there is the rainbow.
This is a Most Beautiful Story dear cousin Helen <3
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