If you were to come to our house on a chilly fall evening I might serve you white chili. With thanks to my good friend Margie in Wisconsin, who was preparing it in her warm, clean kitchen when I was visiting her one afternoon. It looked so good that I asked her for the recipe, which was an immediate hit with all of us. Maybe it’s  been around the block already, but someone asked me for it a long time ago. So here it is:

1 lb. chicken breasts

1 small onion, chopped

2 c. chicken broth (or more)

1 (4 oz.) can chopped green chilies

1/2 tsp. each:

garlic powder

cumin

chili powder

oregano

parsley

1/8 tsp. cayenne pepper

2 cans white beans (great white northern), rinsed and drained

1 c. sour cream

1/2 c. milk

Cook chicken breasts and onions. Cut into pieces. Add beans and seasonings to broth. Simmer. Add milk, sour cream and chicken last. Heat thru. May serve with tortilla chips.

Variations: I just cook chicken legs and backs and don’t usually bother measuring the broth before adding the rest of the ingredients. (of course the chicken breasts make nicer soup, but are more expensive.) I have a hard time finding great white northern beans up here. Any white bean works. I use white kidney or navy beans, but like navy better. And I never drain them.  With both the cayenne and the chilies the soup can be quite spicy. I forgot both last night and no one seemed to notice. Liesl was trying to eat her soup and it was hot. She would blow it so hard that it sprayed off her spoon and then gobble it down. I’ve never served this with tortilla chips. Last night we had it with garlic toast and garden salad.

(The only bad thing about sharing your favorite recipes is that you can’t wow people with them if they are ever your guests.

*********************************************************************************

We’re here to teach our children, I know. But more often they teach me.

Why, just yesterday I learned:

*That you can make words by tearing orange peelings into letters.

*That macaroni is a vegetable. (at our smorgasbord leftovers lunch I told the children they all had to take at least one serving of vegetables and when I was filling Andre’s plate he said, “I’ll take macaroni for my vegetable.”)

*That a house left to itself (or to the preschoolers) brings a mother to shame. Which is why the old diaries I’ve been wasting time reading were put away for the day and we cleaned this shameful house. (But look what I found when digging for old diaries.  The sweater set I wore when I was a baby.)

*That cards you buy can totally disappear when you finally get around to sitting down to sign and send them. (I knew this before, but yesterday confirmed it.) That beautiful card seems to be gone.for.good. Maybe my children didn’t teach me this. Whatever.

*That chapstick always tastes good to a 2 year old. It doesn’t matter how often she’s been disciplined for eating it.

*That you should never buy a Canada hoodie for your 13 year old son and plan to wear it yourself once in a while because you like it too.

*That nothing makes a 9 year old feel more insecure than a disagreement between Dad & Mom. (I knew this before too, but it’s one I need to be reminded of too often.)

A happy Friday to you.

May you soak in the beauty of the season.

May you thank God for the gift of today.

May you know the truth of “for it’s only in Your will that I am free.”

 (Random wistful post of the last months of summer.  With apologies to the many of you who saw these photos and read some of these very words on Facebook already. )

Random photo of Liesl reading to her dolls, the most blessed thing you ever saw.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the guys knew how GooD they look when they wash dishes?

*But I know.  They have a lot of other things to do that I have no clue about.*

^ ^ ^ (The other Sunday afternoon in our kitchen with Andrew & Vivian Miller as guests.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if big sisters and their sweet little Chinese babies and cute 7 year olds lived next door instead of 14 hours away?

*But maybe we wouldn’t get along so well if that was the case.*

And wouldn’t it be nice if kind aunties who make work fun for your children and build cardboard polly pocket houses and trim trees and drink hazelnut coffee with you would come more often?

*But then it wouldn’t be as special when they do.*

And wouldn’t it be nice if little girls who start with one ladybug pet named Flower and then start a whole colony of them would never grow up?

*But then you wouldn’t have the help and companionship of young ladies who say, “Are you tired, Mom?   I can sweep the floor.”  And you wouldn’t get advice about the way you tied your scarf or if your dress and sweater look good together.  And you wouldn’t have girls like this gracing your house.*

Wouldn’t it be nice if life was all meals out in fancy dining rooms and peppermint sage body wash  and Jacuzzi suites and crisp white duvets on hotel beds and time to connect with the person you married 15 years ago? (It was SUCH a good little honeymoon, people.)

*But then you wouldn’t have mountaintop experiences like this with your favorite family.*

*And you’d soon be broke.*

*And who would you eat barbecued corn and mountain pies with at cabins in the mountains?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all take pictures like Christy @twofus_1  or Rachel @foreveranoatneygirl_n2Hisown ?  Instead of shots like this of a bright golden field and amazing yellow leaves?

*Yes.  That would be nice.*

Wouldn’t it be nice if some of the poses of the family photos didn’t have leaf shadows that look like a hairnet on the dad’s face? 

 And if you (and he) had thought about it that the shoes he slipped on his hurry out the door might show in the pictures and he’d chosen his nice brown casual shoes instead of tennis shoes with the tongues showing? J

 Wouldn’t it be grand if we never made faces like this

*But then what would we have to laugh at?*

Wouldn’t it be nice if exaggeration was always as funny as a 4 year old’s impatiently waiting on his toast at breakfast?  “Mom, I’ve been sitting here for miles and MILES of years.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if 9 year old boys were always this quiet and well-mannered?

And if cabbages like this were easy to store?

And if aunties from Wisconsin were nearby to make pie crusts every weekend?

*But then how fat we would all be.*

Wouldn’t it be nice if by the time you get brave enough to paint a wall dark brown the ‘look’ hasn’t changed to sweet clean blues and oranges and whites or greys and yellows without you knowing it?

Tonight at 8:45 my 3 littlest have a huge play dough bakery going.  There are markers in the mix for some reason too.  Earlier they had a concoction of lentils, dried beans, flour, poppy seeds, and water happening. 

I am holding on to the beauty of fall.  I think it seems incredibly beautiful because we know its brevity.

 I should shop online for brown drapes and Canon cameras and 560 Levis for Dan.  I am trying.  But I really don’t enjoy shopping, online or otherwise.  I used to in the days before kids.  And the reason I don’t now is because it is so time-consuming.  And I am indecisiveness defined.

I briefly entertain thoughts of online writing courses this winter.  I have done a little shopping for them as well.  But then I wonder who I am kidding that writing interests me. 

And since this random brain unloading is getting very self-centered I will stop.  I love my old and new friends on Xanga and Facebook.  Your Friday photo days are a highlight and you inspire me often in other ways as well.  Thank you!

She woke up smiling but it quickly turned sour when I gave her milk in a sippy cup instead of the regular cup she insisted on using.

I drew some warm bathwater and put her in the tub with the bubbles and her new doll from Grandma to play with. Twenty minutes later she wanted to get out.

She’s chilly from the wetness. I rub her dry and she begs me to hold her, all bundled in the rough green towel that smells of Sunlight Fresh Rain laundry soap.

Cradled in my arms, I soak in her beauty. Brown skin, brown eyes, pretty lips and white, white teeth. I kiss her face and tell her I love her.

She smiles and sings the first lines of our favorite song, hers and mine. “I love you so much, I love you so much. I can’t even tell you how much I love you.” Almost on key. Big breaks between each syllable as she tries her best to get each one in correctly.

I hold her. And all the frustration I felt last night and this morning when I tried to wake up oozes away.

I forgive you, baby. I forgive you for last night when your wild habit of getting over-tired and stringing both of us out to the max kept us up till 1 a.m. When the frustration of mothering the 6th 2 year old made me want to cry and the weariness overtook me and left me unable to make decisions for anyone’s good. When I was too tired and too cross and too lazy to take the time to train you right.

I dress her and make her the thing she loves best for breakfast–her dippy egg. Runny yolk, the whole thing mashed up. She drinks her orange juice and eats her toast and jam. And because it’s a special morning there are blueberries.

We take apart the wet doll from Grandma that’s dripping water all over the place to drain out the water. But I can’t get the second leg back on again, even though I sit down on the floor and try for what feels like forever. It makes her sad, this one-legged doll.

Then Dan comes in and she’s so happy see her daddy. He hugs her. She gives him the doll and man-like, he easily twists the leg back into place. He just grins when I say, “Now how DID you do that?”

You know what?

That’s all humanity really needs.

We need a warm bubble bath when we’re feeling grouchy.

We need someone to hold us and soak in our beauty when we’re wet and cold and nasty.

We need to be told that we’re loved.

We need to be forgiven for the way we’ve misused the time and the preciousness of others.

We need good food to keep us going.

And blueberries once in a while.

We need a wise strong Daddy who fixes our brokenness.

Today it is corn.

And yesterday it was peaches.

Corn that my Indiana and Pennsylvania friends would laugh at.  Little nubbins that you would probably throw to your pigs.  I don’t know why it’s so crazy this year.  Maybe because of all the rain in July.  The packs I will put in the freezer in relation to the work it was to pick and husk it is not an intelligent ratio.

And precious golden peaches at $1.10 a pound.  Usually I don’t bother canning at that price and I don’t know what came over me this year.  We just eat apples and bananas all winter.  But maybe it was the peer pressure of the ladies at church all buying them….or the goodness of opening home-canned peaches that Grandma Martin from Wisconsin sometimes gives us…or just the nesting instinct.  And no–I’m not pregnant.  

The weather is unspeakably gorgeous.  Upper 20s (80+ F) for temperature.  Warm wind and big blue sky.

Dan is swathing a very good crop of oats today.

I feel gratefulness swelling big in my heart.  The weather speaks calm to my sun-seeking soul.

This is the view from our place and the camera does not do it justice.  At all.

But canning and freezing still makes me cross.

Oh that I had wings like a dove and could fly away!  Leaving the sticky kitchen, the laundry piles, and the mountain pie makers that haven’t been properly scrubbed from the weekend.  Flying somewhere to a clean, orderly place with iced coffee on the deck and time to soak up the sun. And maybe to blog a few grand and noble thoughts. 

But wait.  There are two boxes of pears to can tomorrow.  I cannot let $1.10 a pound go to waste.  And the broccoli needs to be frozen.

And there are a few sun-ripened tomatoes to eat.

And we have not had frost and it’s well into September.

One act of thanksgiving,

    when things go wrong with us,

        is worth a thousand thanks

           when things are agreeable to our inclinations.  -saint john of avila-

P.S.  My last post about charging?  I don’t do that in real life.  It was just my rant of the day.

And I’ve been reading some mighty good blog posts on xanga and not taking time to comment on them.  Thanks for all the inspiration, ladies.  And the LoVeLy photography.

EDIT:  One of my good friends lost her dad to a heart attack last week.  And just four years ago her brother was killed in a logging accident.  Just after I posted these trite words, I saw the photos of her dad’s memorial on Facebook and was cut to the heart.  Quiet places to drink iced coffee seem small and selfish in the face of grief.

My Dears,

Yes, you heard right.

It’s gonna start costing you. 

Sock balls in the laundry basket-$2

Towels on the floor-$1

Unmade beds-$3

Dirty socks on the kitchen table-$3

Jackets & Bibles left in the suburban-$2

Clothes that you wore for two hours on Sunday morning crumpled into the laundry basket next to the muddy jeans-$3

Shoes kicked off right inside the door in the pathway where we all have to walk-$2

Unreplaced toilet paper rolls-$1

Unfed dogs at noon-$3

Unclosed bread bags-$2

Half-drunk glasses of milk left on table-$1.  (full of cookie crumbs-$2)

Milk pitcher not returned to refrigerator-$2

Cookie containers not tightly closed-$2

I know you think this is steep.  But considering the $3 cookie dough icecream cones I bought you the other day, I think it’s perfectly reasonable.

Besides, I could use a little spending money.

HoWeVeR…..

If you should brush your teeth and go to bed without being told

Or voluntarily get up and start clearing the table after supper

Or get off the computer at the exact moment that your alloted time is up

Or not complain about the unfairness of life when a sibling gets invited to a sleepover and you stay at home

Or come out to the garden and quietly help pick beans

Or set the table at 5:45 without prompting

Or sweep up the kitchen floor after a meal because you notice it’s dirty…

We will negotiate.

Because I am not hard to please.  Not at all.

AND if you grow up someday

And are not scarred by all the mistakes I made

And you come back and say “Thanks and I love you and you did your best, Mom.”

Your debt is erased for all time. 

XOXOXO,

Mom

So much time in the garden this week, bonding with the peas and connecting with the beans.

So much time to think and dream.

I chose the name quiet_hearts for Xanga because I love the sound of Elisabeth Elliot’s book title Keep a Quiet Heart.  And I really long to have a quiet heart.

But in all truth my name should be arestlessheart.  Because there is such a thread of aching, restless wonderingwandering that is my second nature.  (And what is meant by that ‘second nature’ business anyway?  Maybe it’s my first nature.)

Anyway, I started a post and even downloaded pictures about dreams and longings.  Here’s a sneak peek at the cottage-by-the-sea-where-I-write-books (ha!) and where Dan & I sit on our front and porch and drink coffee laced with thick cream and invite the neighbors for dinner parties in our English gardens in the backyard.  Or wait.  Would gardens grow on those rocks?

Don’t you get tired of hearing me talk about the posts I started?  I do too.  And then they go the way of Idaho-trip posts and my-journey-with-depression posts and a-child-left-to-himself posts and what-it’s-like-to-go-gray-in-today’s-society posts.  But that’s the way it is here.

And speaking of all that, I see this blog reiterating the same things:  distaste for winter, depression, apologies for bad photography/cameras, parenting questions, faith questions.  I know some of that’s just life, but I think it’s time to move on. 

And since the dream post is where it is for now….

We had birthdays in July.

Bryant Joseph, the philosopher.  Who wanted strawberry shortcake for this 9^th birthday.  This boy has middle-child syndrome right now and is an emotional powerhouse.  (So unlike his mother.)  It’s like he’s not sure what he wants to do with his life yet and will be unhappy till he knows.  And all I really want is for him to just be a little boy for a while yet.  He loves to start a good fire and be with friends his age and read Encyclopedia Brown books and it’s because of him that I talk about story tapes playing all. the. time.  He is an insightful person & has an intellectual twist to his nature.  We’re needing lots of wisdom in channeling a growing mind in the right direction.  And we love him.

And Andre Matthew.  May he always keep his sweet face that is almost as wide as it is long.  May he never learn to say his “r’s”, and may it be ages before he realizes how unrealistic Mom’s tractors and balers are.  When he was born less than 16 months after Natalia I just didn’t know how we’d handle it all.  But he’s truly a sunshine boy and we wouldn’t trade him for the wealth of Bill Gates, a cottage by the sea, or every talent in the world.

And August 10 marked the Anniversary that Wasn’t.  Our 15^th.  But that’s what happens when you marry a farmer in August and it rains for the month of July and you live up in the boondocks and the grandmas are in Belize and Wisconsin and your best babysitter just had a baby and the other babysitters are baling hay.  So I picked beans and Dan sawed lumber and kept the balers going.  We topped off the day with a night out at Bay Tree Mennonite, where there was a meeting to reorganize jobs for the next year of church life.  Much as I love our church, that service is probably my least favorite of any in the year.  We will celebrate later and it’s good to be a big girl now and not let little things like anniversaries in the bean patch bother me much.  And I know that Dan will keep his word and we will have a nice little trip later.  And now we have longer to look forward to it and plan for it.

But because I love seeing wedding pictures I’ll show you some of ours.  15 years ago when wedding photography was a far cry from what it is today. 

I loved that day.  And our honeymoon to the Maritimes was dreamy.  It really was.  Except for the smoke smell that pervaded our little rental car because we had to leave our campstove behind in the airport in Edmonton and cooked everything over the fire when we camped.  The hotels we stayed in felt luscious, but the camping was lots of fun too.  And we slept in one little cottage by the sea too.  And there were quaint churches and yellow wheat fields next to the water.  We fell in love with Atlantic Canada and hope to go back someday. 

August for us means Peas and Beans (had I mentioned them before?) and Flowers.  This was the week where I realized again that I would gladly fill buckets with produce because I’m a picker.  But I am NOT a processor.  Could I fill my bean and raspberry pails and turn them over to you to can and freeze and make jam?  Please?  Actually, I’ll even shell the peas and snap the beans, but then let me go.  I could throw fits about hours in a hot kitchen over the stove.  Proverbs 31 stops right there.  But oh I am grateful for the abundance.  And the children are really, really good helpers. 

I am challenged to dare to live fully right where I am.  (ann voskamp)

And wherever I am, to be all there.  (I read that on grace2be’s blog.)

And this from purpleamethyst:

“What you think and do now builds.

Value this moment.

Be patient.

Smile often.

Love the process of living each minute fully.

Your presence is a source of strength

and an inspiration

to people you spend time with.

Give your greatest gift–

your full attention,

yourself.”

~Alexandra Stoddard

And if you don’t have time to do anything else today, read this blog.

http://whisperedlonging.wordpress.com/2011/08/11/a-worthless-race-from-my-perspective/

That is how/what I would write If Only I Could.

 It’s a curious thing that when the suburban is full of children and we’re off to an appointment or to church and we’re running a little late we drive like crazy.  And my mind is whirling and there’s a story tape playing and there’s often some fighting happening or someone asking a question or telling a story that no one is listening to.  But today when it was just baby girl and me and she was sleeping with her pretty lips pooching out I just ambled along.  All the long road to Beaverlodge I would have gone 90 kms an hour if the big trucks hadn’t wanted to pass me.  I sang and prayed and planned blog posts and took in the beauty of the wide sky and the big country where we live.  It really didn’t matter that I was only picking up 4-wheeler parts at the Honda dealer.

It’s a curious thing, this big country.  It’s hard to imagine how much I love it and how much I hate it.  Ever since we spent two years in Belize I wonder every winter why we live here and fight the cold white elements.  Then comes muddy April and I am ready to buy a ticket to anywhere where the soil is sandy.  And then there is golden, fleeting summer.  And I fall in love again, only to die of a broken heart when the geraniums freeze on September the 6^th.

It’s a curious thing how fast you can get attached to twelve lively kids.  These students learned a lot of songs and verses last week at vacation Bible school.  They made pig noses for the prodigal son drama on program night, played soccer, and tie-dyed socks in all kinds of wild colors.  It thrilled me that some of them were hearing these Bible stories for the first time in their lives.  And they were old enough to really discuss them.  There was a lot to talk about when I told them the story of the lady who wiped Jesus feet with her hair: (“eww”  ….”WHAt?” ….”Really?”)  and I loved the way the tall father in the prodigal play picked up the much smaller 10 year old who was his “son” and spun him around and around when they met on the road when the son returned.

Photos posted with permission from the parents that I don’t know well and who may object to photos of their children online.  (I’m only assuming it’s ok with you, Suzi and Phoebe and Linnea and Heidi and Laura.:)

It’s a curious thing, the conversation I hear around this house:

Natalia:  I’m a really fat lady.  Pretend I have 3 babies in my tummy-Andre, Liesl, and my doll.”

Andre: “I’m pretending I’m in your tummy even though I’m riding trike, okay Tillie?” (It’s a curious thing, the nickname ‘Tillie’ for Natalia.)

(Later) Andre: “Pretend that I’m born now and I’m one and can nod my head and stuff, ok?”

It’s a curious thing, this online writing.  Who are the people who read this blog where I usually just come to talk about  the random things I’ve been thinking about so I can get on with picking the peas and doing the laundry and cleaning iced tea off the floor?

It’s a curious thing that when you decide to stop eating out for a while and send the money to Somalia instead the cravings for a Tim Horton’s smoothie or a DQ icecream seem extra strong.

It’s a curious thing to sit and cry when I read the symptoms of depression: 

-A very negative self-image with strong feelings of inadequacy

-Unable to cope with the smallest problems

-Feelings of guilt

-Indecisiveness

-Sleep irregularities

-Spiritual alienation

-Memory loss and forgetfulness

-Eating irregularities

-Loss of concentration

-Lack of energy

-Hopelessness

And temperaments prone to depression: are extremely introspective, are very sensitive, possess a negative self-image, have poor will-power and self-control, and are perfectionists.

Ugh.  How could this man called French O’Shields in Slaying the Giant describe me to a T?

But I hope I am on the mend again.

It’s a curious thing, how a parent-heart can squeeze and twist and get bent out of shape over a child.   How you long for the good end result but sometimes don’t know how to seize the moment and take the steps to reach that end.  I am in the full throes of this battle-today and every day.

It’s a curious thing how much I love this farmer. 

And how happy it makes him to eat a meal like this when it comes straight off the farm, beef included. 

And it’s curious how I never have the camera on those mornings when I take Alec out to the field to take over the baling for his dad and they stand in their bill caps and talk and gesture with Dan giving instructions about how to go about it all and the moment begs to be captured.

It’s a curious thing how faint-hearted I am when it comes to mice.  There is one little mouse running around in our kitchen.  (at least I hope it’s just one)  We’ve lived in this house for three years and have never seen a mouse here.  And it makes me feel sick to know there is one at large.  I shriek when I see it.  I wear tennis shoes after 10 p.m. when I know it’s starting its night life.  I feel like there’s a mouse at my feet when I’m driving, I stand on a stool to turn out the light.  The trap is set and Dan has tried to eradicate it for me with a broom, but it’s peeking around a kitchen chair as I type this and I’m terrified.  I can totally identify with the lady who died of a heart attack when a mouse ran around the bathtub ledge when she was showering.  I could handle the little geckos in Belize just fine.  I think it’s the unpredictability of a mouse that freaks me out.

It’s a curious thing how fast the years move along.  And how I used to be so skinny that people said kind things like “You look like a Holocaust victim” or to Dan “You must be eating her share.”

And in our last family pictures I look quite tubby, if I do say so myself.

It’s a curious thing to  go through a Bible passage and focus only on what you as a believer are and have in Christ based solely on your acceptance of Jesus as your personal Savior, not promises based on additional conditions.

It’s a curious thing, this beautiful almost 12 daughter of ours and her wearing a veil now and looking so grown up.  And me balking because I want her to stay my little girl.  And how do you write of/live delicately and understandably your Mennonite ways when a good portion of your readers/friends aren’t familiar with them or have left them?  (Ok, that last sentence is strange.  Help!

Ah yes.  This blogging world is a curious place.  The me-ism, the introspection.  The way I really hope I’m a caring and considerate person,  but when I write MY thoughts and feelings and idiosyncrasies just tumble out and I can’t stop them.

And since I’m tired of curious things and you are too I will brave the mouse and head for the kitchen. 

There’s a lot of conflict happening in her mind between between the lady she is and the lady she longs to be. 

In her honesty she wants to write about it.  But it comes out funny. And it feels self-centered.  And the children clamber around her.  And the story CD plays.  And the chocolate milk spills.  And the hamburger needs to be fried.  And the corn needs to be hoed.  And this morning she tucks the computer document back into its ‘Maybe-someday-but-probably-not’ file.   Because the porch is dirty again.  And there are songs to get together for vacation Bible school.  And gifts to buy for baby showers.  And roasts to bake and tubs to clean.

And she really must undust her bedroom.  You don’t do that?

“There,” said Amelia Bedelia.

She looked at her list again.

“Did you ever hear tell of such a silly thing. At my house we undust the furniture. But each to his own way.”

Amelia Bedelia took one last look at the bathroom. She saw a big box with the words Dusting Powder on it.

“Well, look at that. A special powder to dust with!” exclaimed Amelia Bedelia.

So Amelia Bedelia dusted the furniture.

“That should be dusty enough. My, how nice it smells.”

**************************************************************************

We took family pictures the other night. 

The mosquitoes were atrocious and by the end of 30 minutes the little guys were covered with welts.  (Unthinking mother thought it was windy enough that the creatures wouldn’t bother too badly and left the Deep Woods Off at home.) 

Sweet Liesl was uncooperative through most of it.  And Luci did her silly head tip thing.

The sun and shadow was not right.  The camera not high quality.

Man of the family stands at stalwart attention.  We didn’t have our act together with cute poses.  Maybe we will try again tomorrow.

But the canola is already fading. 

And if this family of blue and white doesn’t charm you, maybe the Alberta landscape will.

A wonderful weekend to each of you.

It’s raining. 

Again.

3.5 inches and counting at our house.

Highway closed in spots and our own little range road by the oil well washing out.

Beautiful wheat going into head now lodging in the heavy rains.

My emotions have been on edge the last few days. I don’t know why.   I told Dan last night that I wish I just didn’t feel everything so deeply.  It all cuts.  From the beauty of a sunset to the words I read to the face-off I had with my child to the drowning barley field.  There’s this underlying sadness that I can’t understand, I write in my journal.  Added to that, I feel like I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing except (kind of) keeping this house going in the last week.

Dan & I had breakfast out at White Spot this morning.  I love a chance to wear my pretty black neck scarf in July.  We watched the rain fall on sad petunias and sodden streets and quietly drank our decaf.  We savored the peace and talked about life.

(The Six at home ate frozen waffles and bacon that their dad fried for them.)

After breakfast we bought flowers at Safeway and went to hold our beautiful new grand-nephew at the hospital.  He has a head full of black, black hair and the sweetest, fullest little mouth.  His young parents are so proud and happy. (And no, I don’t have photos.  And yes, I am sad that I didn’t take the camera.)

After hearing an ohsofamiliar and yetsodifferent and uniqueandspecial birth story and remembering ours (the many we went to Coop for groceries.  Fresh cherries, fish and chicken, Crisco, frozen beans as we await the ones growing in the garden, batteries.

Driving home through the rain I started singing Laura Story’s song :

What if Your blessings come through raindrops
What if Your healing comes through tears?
What if a thousand sleepless nights
Are what it takes to know You’re near?

What if trials of this life
Are Your mercies in disguise?

It fit.  The rain.  And the hard nights we’ve been having with children up at various and sundry times for various and sundry reasons.  Liesl the most restless of all and we don’t really know why.

And then Dan said, “Did you think at all about how that could have been Kevin & Lori’s baby you held today?”

(My brother Kevin was married to my nephew’s wife for 8 short months before he died.  Yeah, it’s a little confusing.)

And I hadn’t even thought of it.  That in itself made the tears start.

And then I cried some more. 

And I said, “Kevin would have been so proud to have a little son.”

And later, “But he’d be proud of Joe & Lori’s baby too.”

And later, “In fact, I’m sure he IS proud today.”

And we drove past the fenceposts that have nearly disappeared in the rushing water.  Home to our house on the hill and 3 smiling littles to meet us at the door.

Later today I read these words by Ann Voskamp:

“Only self can kill joy.  I’m the one doing this to me.”  The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy-nothing else.”

And “Pride slays thanksgiving….A proud man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.”  -Henry Ward Beecher-

And because I am not Ann I can’t wrap this up  nicely.  I don’t even know if this makes sense.

It’s just the piercing emotions of the day for me.  Emotions that I can’t put any trust in but are there nonetheless.  And facts that keep me holding to Christ with a longing for better and fuller life ahead.  And I don’t know why I feel like blogging when I’m sad.  I don’t write about the hot and sunny Thursday this week when the children and I went to town and got books at the library and ate blueberries and cheese sticks at the park.  I don’t write about Canada Day ball games with friends and that one luscious fly that I caught even though I didn’t make it to first base one single time.  I don’t write about fireworks on a windy Alberta evening.

There is steak for dinner tonight.  My white walls and floral livingroom wallpaper are no longer glaring at me.  (Though I have yet to decide how to decorate the consomme brown and the french ditch green and the newbury tan.)  The boys have been playing Lego more nicely than I ever dreamed possible.  My windows are dirty, but I think I’ll invite guests for lunch tomorrow.

And the rain keeps falling.

On the way home from church on Sunday we followed a huge truck with some unknown piece of metal Something towering on the back of it.  I was looking forward to getting to the road we live on and turning off, leaving the gigantic moving edifice to continue on its cumbersome way.  But as we neared Range Road 134 I saw the tell-tale “Rig Move in Progress” sign and my heart sank.  Mr. Driver of The Huge Truck put on his blinker and turned on to what used to be our sweet country road.  Worse still, he then made a right turn into our barley field.

I  had known it was coming for the last year, but am still unprepared.  This is now one of the things I see from my kitchen window.

I always feel sad and sorry when I see a farmer’s field being overtaken by the little city that grows around an oil well.  It used to be everyone else that I felt sorry for.  And now I’m feeling a little sorry for me.

Dan is so wise.  He reminds me over and over that this is what makes our part of the country what it is.  The oil industry is what makes Alberta the richest province in Canada right now.  Dan saws lumber for the pipelines and because he does we have the funds to give-and travel-and buy a new vehicle when our mini-van crashed.  We have been blessed  because we hardly felt the economic crunch that many parts of Canada and the US have gone through in the last years.

(The oil industry also pays us well for damage to crops.  Dan as the farmer/renter of the barley field has that income coming.  There is also a good sum for the oil well going in on this land. My dad still owns it so that money belongs to him.  Here in Canada the revenues are a little different than they are in the states for having an oil well, because technically the farmer owns only the topsoil and not all that’s underneath it.  But we are well reimbursed and not complaining.)

When I get too anti-change Dan says, “Well, are you ready to stop driving and heating the house and traveling?”  (Because it’s the gas and oil that makes it possible for all of us to do those things.)  And I’m not.

But STILL.  I chafe.  I dream.  I dream of friendly little communities without the fast pace and expense of a community with money  to burn.  I remember the days of going to our little country post office for the mail and chatting with the neighbors.  Today the post office/convenience store combination is abuzz with trucks in its huge parking lot. And people wearing the blue and yellow coveralls of the oil patch worker buy hotdogs to go.

Thankfully the canola fields are in bloom and I can see beyond the oil rig city to untouched farms.  And one of these days I might just saddle up our horse and park the suburban.  I might chop wood for the winter fire.  But wait.  The horse frightens me when I try to bridle her.  And I am a lousy wood chopper.

And the sky is still blue.  And it’s July.

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Alec was washing dishes the other night and he & I were laughing at the scene outside the window. Liesl was running pell-mell down the hill with her doll and stroller. Minutes later, the doll was lying in a pink heap in the garden, deserted stroller lying beside it. “A young and inexperienced mother,” said Alec.

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Andre & Natalia somehow got into this thing of chanting “God is Jesus and Jesus is God.” Considering the truth of the Trinity, they aren’t so far off. Andre was doing his chant the other day and at the end he added, “And they’re all mixed up togedder.”