Monday Morning Ramble

Trees bending in the morning breeze. Summer heat has arrived with near 100 degree temps all week long. Outside work needs to be done in the morning from now on, no more afternoons in the garden. The goats are lazy most of the day, moving only to find better shade as the sun moves across the sky. The garden has been neglected for three weeks now, as I was down with an infection, I wonder if I can take back the order and "weedlessness" once again. Tall grasses have filled in where tidy rows were. I am not about to take pictures of this weedy mess and share with you as there is no pride in it now. As much as I love the old fashioned ways and so often have said I wished I lived back 150 years ago, right now, that is not my thought at all. The garden would be our food and having it neglected due to sickness would not be an option, I guess I would have had to be out there working it anyway. Emery would have his work to do. I wonder if people died from such infections as I had. I did do the morning milkings even when I felt miserable, but the garden was not something I thought about since we don't HAVE to have it to survive. Milking has to be done, plain and simple. Thinking along those lines, well, maybe I would have worked in the garden if it was something that our life depended upon.

I watched Oprah last week when they had people give up certain modern items for a period of time and how the families felt more connected to one another without all the things that divide us up as families, each one pursuing their own interests with lone activities. Made me think back to how we raised our children, no cell phones, most of the time, no television. No internet for the children, lots of story times and games in the evenings. Gardening and animal chores, pretty much a plain life. No fashion trends, no glossy magazines and no boy girl relationships until the children were just about adults. No sports either. I know they resent some of the choices we made for them, feeling that they missed out on some of the "normal" activities of most children, but at the same time, they all know the way we raised them made them into really good people. I guess I would do it all the same if I had the chance to do it over again. It worked pretty well. We have delightful young adults that call us mom and dad. With your children, there are no do overs. You get one shot at it. Mess it up big time and you can apologize but you may not be able to fix the results of bad choices made or attitudes that damage a child. For us, we tried hard to follow what we knew as advice from the Bible, we used that as our blueprint for parenting. It seemed tried and true to us and we saw it had worked for others that used it with love in their hearts. We saw it turn out badly for people that were stern and hard hearted. Rebellion festers in that sort of environment.

I have no idea where I am going with this, just thinking and writing, rambling...which is what this blog does from time to time...ramble in the mornings. Thinking out loud.

This morning I am just glad I live right in the time spot God put me and had parents that sent me to a Christian school, and set my heart on a path to find out what truth is, and that led me to meeting Emery, who is a good good man and all that followed since, including a new generation of beautiful grandbabies being raised in love and wisdom.

To this might I add, that even with the roads I have taken, I have remained liberal in some of my thinking and not much of a cookie cutter kind of believer, which is probably why we are no longer attending a plain church : ) I tend to think outside the box.

Melissa 1996