Simple...just simple

I have had to look back in my picture files for the ordinary, daily things in my life. Life has not been ordinary for some time now for us. In a chair there is a pile of clean clothes waiting to be folded, taken off the line two days ago. That is not a common thing in my house. In the kitchen sink, some dishes. The floor has dusty corners and sewing lays in a basket waiting to be completed. But, I know this is not our life style, it is a hitch in the normal. Its temporary.

Our life is quiet, filled with things like freshly baked bread, kneaded with love, muscles in my arms and hands working. Days are filled with things like stacking wood for the coming cold season, and picking fresh vegetables from our garden, casting out grains of feed for the chickens and gathering eggs from the nest boxes. The scent of apple pie baking in the oven, drifting out the back door and filling the yard with good smells.

Sitting in the quiet of the night, house filled with the warm glow of the lamps burning, Emery reading to me from the Bible, our hearts joined as our hands are in prayer for our family.

It's just simple ordinary things, old fashioned things. Aspects of a lifestyle chosen so long ago. As a family, gathered around our big table, we laugh about the funny farm stories, chasing piglets through the neighborhood, buggy rides to pick the boys up from school. Stories of courage too, Emery performing a c-section on a goat to try and save the dying goats kids. Nights spent in the barn, watching new life emerge. Sheering sheep, milking buckets of snowy white milk for the families needs.

Simple things....we want to have these things for Mei-Ling and our other grand-children to be. To pass on this way of life to the next generation. To take deep breaths in a barn freshly hayed and smell the sweetness. To know the joy of feeding baby animals.

No matter where I go in search of something I think I might want, always the road to happiness leads me back to this homestead life. Never do I stray for very long.
The fancy books, the fancy clothes are all gone to Goodwill now. They never did fit me well, emotionally. My needs are for the ordinary simple life. Not in things but in life, slow and easy as it has been for so many years.