Contentment

Sometimes it is difficult to put into words what the perfect morning actually feels like.  Despite the fact that the house was cold, since we were lazy and did not build a fire last night in the stove after a wild, windy cold front blew in from the north, the kind that shakes the windows and howls like a pack of wolves outside your door, there was a level of joy about the morning that rose above words.  Emery had an early morning dentist appointment and was gone long before the sun rose in the eastern sky.  It was my duty to do the morning chores and it just seemed fitting to wear Emery's jacket and mud boots, and that is just what I did and smiled all the way out to the chicken house and the wood shed.  His jacket scented with his cologne, it felt right.  A bit of that first love feeling, after more than 3 decades of marriage, I still get butterflies in my stomach when I am near him.  
I was thinking this morning as I was making candles, that although I never had a career outside the home,  I have always felt completed, fulfilled, to use a term used often these days.    Even now, with the children grown, my days are so full of joy and an easiness that defies definition.   I am busy all the time it seems, yet there is always time to sit and watch the birds at the feeder, or read a well loved book for the third time.   There is time to cook with passion, sew if I wish to.  Garden with pleasure, knowing there will be fresh organic food on our table, right from our land.   I can spend the entire day playing Princess and the Pea with a four year old, or collect acorns with a two year old and lay in the grass and giggle with these darling grandchildren.  Time is for the most part, mine to determine how it is spent.  That is freedom !  Contentment floods my life daily.   I don't want the riches of the world, I want joy and peace and yes, contentment with just what God has given me at this moment in time.  Life is profoundly good.   Emery and I have worked with  steadfast hearts to create a life that is not dependent on what the mass media has told us we must have in order to be happy.  We have built a life that is not reflected in the latest edition of a glossy magazine or on the home channel, but a life that is built on love, faith, strong relationships, and ensuring we have time to enjoy all that counts in life.  
birds at the feeders
a roaring fire in the stove
frost on the window 
bees wax melting for candle dipping