Homestead Longings

Catch-up Tuesday

I was really hoping to get a picture of the garden area and put it on here, but it seems my camera has finally given up on working. It has been giving us problems for a while, but now it just won't do anything. I tried yesterday to get a picture of the second raised bed that we finally got to put in. I was so excited to finally be putting that together. I decided that the first thing I wanted to put in there would be the strawberries that started going crazy in the other bed. I started out with 4 very little strawberry plants back in April. By the time I transferred them and all the new plants and shoots they have been producing, they practically filled the entire new 8 foot by 4 foot raised bed. Wow! No body ever told me that strawberries were a weed! 4 became about 40.

My son was so excited just a few days ago. He "graduated" from his Winnie the Pooh Kindergarten computer game. He really does love being on the computer. We have still been doing some of his book work here and there. I am finding that even though year round schooling was not the original intention, it happened, and it seems to work really well for us. Here it is summer,  and we are finally slowing down enough from everything else. The trips, the moving, the projects. We have finally had time to sit and work on the schoolwork together. And besides, it is starting to heat up here in Texas, so what better time to stay in the air-conditioned house and work on something else?

I am so behind on cleaning this week already. Not stressing it, though. Just noticing that I am. Yesterday started off at about 2am. My dh got a call just before 2 that one of their guys was in a motorcycle accident. Nothing sends icy chills down my spine like the words "motorcycle accident". Maybe it is from a past experience where someone I loved very much was in a motorcycle accident. Even though he was okay, it didn't make it any less scary or painful. So, when my husband hopped up from bed and started making phone calls, I had a hard time getting back to sleep. Several times I got up myself and wandered to the door of the office. I asked if there was anything I could do, or anything I could help him with. He would just say, "No, not really." each time, and I would wander away. Now that I think about it, I probably should have just prayed for the man. Silly me.

Anyways, yesterday was lost to remembering. There are about 3 or 4 boxes still unpacked sitting in corners around this house. Yesterday, while messing around with one in my bedroom closet, I came across our box of photos and my old journals. The earliest dating back to the very end of 1998. Yes, I keep journals. I thought about throwing them out at one time, but then I read through it and realized how much I forget. So, yesterday I sat and read again. What a journey. In one entry I read what almost blew my mind. It was before I actually became a Christian, and I was living with some very dark stuff. Yet, even I managed to forget ever writing words like these:

"I need something now. Something to show me where the next path leads. Something to show me where it begins!...I searched for my comfort in God, and only found the effort futile. There is an open void within my chest where once my heart beat, and there is an open void in the sky where once my God stood. I am alone and frightened, there is comfort in nothing. My puzzle has fallen apart. These doubts and fears that haunt me day and night. Are they no more than the wake of my life, or is there more?"

Scary, huh? I tell you the truth. It is an act of shear effort to try and follow with my mind the broken and winding path that finally got me to where I am. To God and to a life with joy in it.

Okay, I just don't know what to say after that, so I am going to go about my day, hehe. Be blessed!