The Joy of Grandchildren and my simple life

This morning I had the blessing of being able to baby sit Mei-Ling for a little while. What fun I had taking her outside to play and watch her feed dried leaves to the goats. She chased after the cats, studied leaves, hid in the junipers, and marched over the bridge so many times I lost count.

She gave me lots of kisses, put her arms out for me to pick her up and snuggled into my shoulder when the chickens scared her. I was filled.

I kept thinking about how much this kind of joy is what makes my life simple. We are not loaded down with family issues but instead filled with love for one another. I suspect that even if we lived totally off grid, and yet had family issues, life would never be simple. It is this peaceful life of harmony within the family that makes life uncomplicated. Hanging clothes, heating with wood, cooking from scratch, having goats and chickens are just the extras in a simple life, they are not the things that give peace. What does give us peace and the desire to live apart from the rat race comes from the heart, from a spiritual place. You can do all the homestead-ie things in the world and have a very complicated, stress filled life. Its only when we have an inner peace that we can lay aside the need to show off by owning bigger and better things. Its only when we have inner peace that we can abandon the need to shop and fill our houses with more stuff than we will ever need. Inner peace is more about relationships than just about any thing else. Relationships with family and most importantly with God.

Today, watching Mei-Ling play, it all was so clear, that the good life, the simple life, is about being so filled with the love of family and a deep spiritual peace that we just don't need a bunch of stuff or bigger and better possessions to fill some void.