Therapy

Psalm 23

The Lord in my Shepherd; I shall not want.

He has plans for me and my family.  He is always prepared.  We have all we need.

He makes me to lie down in green pastures;

 He provides peace and rest.  "Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10  I rest in the knowledge that He is providing.

He leads me beside the still waters.

He knows my limitations.  He does not belittle me.  He will not endanger me.  He does not force me beyond my strength and abilities.  He knows how to nourish and refresh me.

He restores my soul;

After life squeezes the juice out of me, leaving only the pulp, I feel no enthusiasm.  But Genesis 2:7 tells me He breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life and he became a living soul.  So now too, God is still willing to breathe new life and breath into my soul.  I was lost, but now I'm found.  I become frustrated, but He gives me peace.

He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

 I am like a sheep with no internal compass, my vision is limited, and I am defenseless.  But like the shepherd, He knows the way.  "I am the way, the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through Me." John 14:6

He alone is found to be true, therefore He is the way, which in turn preserves my life.

"In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." Proverbs 3:6

 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for You are with me;

I become caught up in fear, uncertainty, disappointment, and rejection.  But these deathly shadows do not last long!  "Be still, and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10.  In these times, if I stop and think of His glory and power, I realize I have nothing to fear.  Uncertainty evaporates.  Disappointment is crushed by my Rock.  And any rejection is healed by the knowledge that Jesus was rejected by the proud.  So I see my children and am reminded what Jesus said, "Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:4 

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Jesus is my protector (rod), and my rescuer (staff).  The business of a shepherd sometimes called for heroic efforts to protect and save his sheep.  The dedication of my Shepherd instills great confidence in me.  "He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.  Behold, He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.  The LORD is your keeper" Psalm 121: 3-5

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

 He provides for me despite the multitude of dangers surrounding me.  The table is spread and everything I need is provided for me as though I were royalty.  How comforting and humbling is that?!  

"just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Matthew 20:28

You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over.

One of the things we can expect is that we will be battered around in this life.  We can expect to suffer along with Him, 1 Peter 4:13.  These are times when the Shepherd attends to each one of us on a personal basis.  Our personal physician.  If I keep my eyes and faith in the Proven One, I will find healing.

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:14, 15

"...and He calls His sheep by name and leads them out." John 10:3

   He revives me with abundant refreshment.  I am known, precious, and worthy.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; 

 Despite all the uncertainty and insanity, I am assured I am precious (Mat.10:31), that ALL things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Nothing can separate us from the love of God and our gift of salvation (Rom. 8:31-39).

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

There's no place like home.

Summer Excitement

There have been so many things going on this Summer, that I haven't found much time to completely relax.  The best part of this Summer was my Sister's visit with her son and hubby, who flew out from Texas!

They braved the flight, well, hubby did (he hates flying, and that's putting it mildly) just to spend about four and a half days with us.  The cousins got to play with each other for the first time in their lives!

 Aren't they adorable!?  Here they are making bird feeders out of pine cones and peanut butter rolled in bird seed.

And here, we went to a cattle watering trough to catch tadpoles for the garden.

The sieve barely worked because they saw it coming.  So we resorted to plucking them straight out of the water by hand once they surfaced.  Aren't they cute baby toads?  Friends of the garden.

In the middle of our week, a storm rolled through!  Yay!  They loved our weather, it was an improvement over their humid Texas heat.  It was a great reprieve from our own dry heat too!  Best of all, our temperatures are almost always a good 10 degrees cooler than the lower elevations.

Here my sister is taking a picture she so aptly called, "The Smores Cam."  When she sends me the picture, I'll show you how it turned out...hilarious!

Flocking like ducks to a pond!

Marshmallows on the ends of mesquite branches we harvested.

And let me tell you, the boys went to sleep the moment their heads hit the pillow, I kid you not!

So much excitement!

My sister on the left and me on the right.

Our time together was way too short!

But we did our best to talk them into moving up on the mountain and join in on our homesteading!

Who knows.  You never can tell what amazing things are in our futures!

For now, they went back home to resume their lives...

...and the tadpoles found their new home...

...overlooking the toad house and garden!

A good time was had by all!

Back on Track

After taking a much needed hiatus, I am now sensing a growing inspiration that I want to share.  As time marches on, we take baby steps toward our dreams.  For the last several months, our baby steps slowed to the relevant speed of "stop."  However subtle movement not worth talking about, much less inspiring, were taking place.

You see, when you are taking raw land and begin transforming the land to accommodate your dreams, drastic measures must take place.  In order to clear useful space for growing our own food, we needed to acquire some equipment for the task.

Behold....the Bulldozer!

When precious little money is the major factor for obtaining anything worth working for, we all find ourselves stalled out.  When funds put a damper on everything, creative measures help move us forward.  Time seems to be the sunlight, and our watering is what nudges us forward.  With time, we took the opportunity to think.  With our watering, we took unique steps, such as selling our diesel pick up truck.  With the benevolence of an acquaintance, he enabled us to pay for the bulldozer with the funds we got from the truck.  Along with a little horsetrading (Miracle Worker's amazing skill), the dream started moving forward again.

Now, I am willing, and able, to dare to dream again.  Garden designs are swirling around in my mind.  Visions of garlic fields are dancing in my head.  It's the garlic we are hoping will be our eventual livelihood.  In fact, it's the land that we hope will take care of us for the rest of our lives.  We hope it will be our own version of a 401K.

This past week is when things started looking good, visually speaking.  Land is being opened up which used to be clogged with scrub oak.

I'm feeling good.

Now I can breathe again.....

I want to thank the Dandelion House, Corn in My Coffee Pot, Lazy J Bar C Farm, and Abundantly Blessed Momma, for remembering me and wishing me well while I took all this time to nurture my inner creative.  You are responsible for making it easier on me to return to blogging!  Thank you for being real.  Consider these flowers yours....

Linking to the Dandelion House Farmgirl Friday Blog Hop!

Life

I am amazed at how busy a life can be on a remote and quiet mountain.  Granted our lives here are all about becoming as self dependent as possible.  Yes, when you have kids, that adds an entire dimension to life you wouldn't otherwise have!  On top of that, being self employed, self motivated, self taught and self sustaining, we are also homeschoolers.  Truly, if it wasn't for this marriage being the awesome team that it is, neither of us could go on like we do now!

Harvesting zucchini 8/15/11

Trouble holding onto harvested zucchini 8/15/11

Drying our onion harvest in mid August.

Homeschool began on 8/22.

Science experiment in the first week of school.  Floating eggs in heavily salted water and comparing with egg in fresh water.  Kids loved this experiment, they didn't realize just how effective it would be!

My 5 year old son is having a little fun-time on the internet playing a math game called "Save the Whale."  It's free, it's so easy and gentle that it makes learning/remembering math facts seem more like, well, a game!  I got this idea from my chosen math program called "Math Mammoth."  We all LOVE IT!!!  I highly recommend it to anyone!  Check it out if you're floundering in the math department!

Here my 2nd grader enjoyed the study we did on Leif Ericsson and the Vikings so much that he designed his own long ship with pipe cleaners!  It wasn't an assignment, it was simply the sheer joy of learning at work!

September 13th was amazing winter-like weather.  It was a much needed change from the relentless heat and the "non-soon" we got in place of typical summer monsoons!

The weather was unpredictable and the scenes equally surprising!  Here we are at sunset!

The children joyfully display their handiwork.  We studied North American Indians last week.  They made paper wigwams and teepees!
This week we are studying the Pilgrims.  We even did an activity which demonstrated what the Pilgrims did in place of glass for their windows.  Each one oiled his own sheet of printer paper with veggie oil, then compared it to a regular clean sheet of paper.  We held them both up to the light and saw how much more light could get through the oiled paper.  Then we placed both sheets on top of newsprint and they could see the newspaper through the oiled paper.  We then made it 'rain' on both sheets of paper and saw how much more durable the oiled paper was!
On a side note for any of you homeschoolers out there, I'd like to recommend checking out the curriculum offered by "My Father's World."  It makes it possible to teach one curriculum at each child's level, freeing you from having to teach multiple and widely varied curricula.  I'm difficult to please, and this one has got me leaping for joy!  It's Biblical while implementing the best of classical education, unit lessons, and Charlot Mason approaches.  It's great.  I am even free to start teaching the children beginning Latin for their foreign language.  For that, I'm using Memoria Press' "Latina Christiana."

The apples on the tree are ready for harvest!  Tasty homegrown apples!

It's official, I've been bitten by the Autumn bug!

I'll sign off now, but not without sending out a great big, THANK YOU to Candy at the Lazy J Bar C.  Even though it appeared I was MIA in blogger world, she up and bestows me with the Liebster Award.  Then as if that wasn't a miracle unto itself, two hearty sweat souls join me in my followers list!  Thank you MamaTea and Dr Momi for your faith in me!  So happy and humbled that you would come join me!  Thank you!

In your honor, I will pass on the love and the award in my next post!

Joyously linking to Farmgirl Friday blog hop #25