t’s been a long time friends. I let this space sit in quiet shadows for many reasons, while so many words were being written and tucked away for a new day.
It is time to make this space home again.
I’m a neighborhood, small town girl-transplanted into the middle of the woods in the country. And for years, everything in my spirit craved the opposite and tried flourishing here.
I am from a loving, yet highly dysfunctional family-yet, became a mom of ten kids… raising them in the woods, surrounded on both sides with farm fields and no neighbors to see.
Any transplant situation takes adjustment, acceptance and adaptation.
Our steep country hill and I became worst enemies and best friends. Year after year, pregnancy after pregnancy,I had to find ways to love my life, live my life and stay well, healthy- emotionally, spiritually and physically.
Every one of my kids trekked this hill for miles with me in a stroller or by my side. It was grueling at first. My legs burned, my feet stepped over the manure, and my conversation was with the trees and the cows.
But, my love for freedom, creation, exercise and results, perseverance and raising my kids in a space that afforded them everything hard work would give them: gave me LIFE.
I began with the painful treks to the top of the hill twenty years ago to jogging six miles a day with a stroller up and back. Those times were then. And now?
Friends, I’m back to the slow, hard ascent to the top of the hill. I hate it and I love it.
And by the time I head back home— every time—I’m thankful.
In the time I have been quiet in this writing space, I have walked some deep grief, valleys of sorrow, mountains of victory and filled notebooks with words, pleas, pain, tears and rejoicing truth.
The long way home is sometimes the journey from lost to found.
I’m thankful for this hard life that has grown me out of my SELF. Amen for knowing that all glory goes to God who gives us strength and health and life to KEEP going!
Today, I am passing this level of acceptance and perseverance on to the next generation. The love of SELF care leads to self acceptance. I know who I am and WHO I answer to.
This is about all of us. The long journey to home: Knowing WHO we are and WHO we answer to.
It is good to be home and I am glad that you are still here, waiting.
We never really leave, we just hold a place for one another with amazing grace. And we call this place HOME.
