This day

Who doesn't like a little encouragement now and then? A little pick-me-up, kind words, a reminder of what's important....it can make all the difference. Perhaps it's not "needed," perhaps you could make it on your own....

perhaps....

but with 8 miles down and 18 looming in the distance, anyone who has run a marathon knows the value of a little encouragement. It doesn't matter where it comes from or in what form. Honking horns and crazy cheers, painted signs, a word from a stranger as you pass, or just the sound of feet matching your stride as you run together. My personal favorite was, "Hurry there's a buffalo chasing you!" I laughed, then ran faster. My second favorite was from a stranger as I ran by. She simply said, "You're doing it."

And instantly I knew I was.

The end would come whenever it came, but for that moment I was doing what it took to get there, and that was enough.

Recently I found myself in the middle of a marathon when all I had scheduled was a 5K. At first I panicked and almost lost my breath, until a friend grabbed hold and reminded me that I knew how to do this. One step at a time....and I lifted my eyes and kept running.

Pray~step~scriptures~step~love~step~ponder~step~pray~step~repent~step~
church~step~serve~step~love~step~forgive~step~teach~step~pray~step~ listen~step~live~step~breathe~
step~
step~
step~
step~

Just because something takes you by surprise doesn't mean you can't be prepared for it. Supplications for daily bread are always answered, for today.

And today you're doing it.

No guts, no glory

There was a moment when it was all clear, but before that, the miles stretched out endlessly.

Studying the map before the race, it was clear that these miles would be hard, 9-17, where the beginning excitement would be well worn off and it would still be a l...ah....ong way from the end. It would be a mental game...

me against myself.

Who else would know if I slowed my pace, or walked a little longer through the water stops?

But I didn't. I held on, kept pushing; going faster when I wanted to go slower. Just get to mile 17.

Then I did.

Slowing for water and goo, my body felt done and my mind was tired of telling it otherwise. Then something opened in my gut and spread...up through my lungs and spread through my legs. My eyes lifted and I started to run. That was the moment of clarity, when I knew that not only would I finish, but finish well.

This week I feel like I have been stuck at a water stop at mile 17 just waiting for my gut to kick in. Finally today I had that moment of clarity and it scared me. Sometimes knowing for sure what I should do does that to me. I hope I have enough guts.

Necessary Heat

As I pulled the decaying muck from my pitchfork, I could feel the heat through my gloves. I had been working this compost pile all spring…keeping it moist, turning it over and over; and yet I was surprised by the heat.

Did you know that an orange peel left setting alone in the desert heat will crinkle and dry, but take months…if not a year to decompose? Take that same orange peel and add a little moisture, pressure and a little oxygen; and a transformation takes place…the result is soil so rich, it is call black gold.


“The ability to qualify for, receive, and act on personal revelation is the single most important skill that can be acquired in this life.”

Simply hearing His word, or casually reading it keeps His true message dry…inactive in my daily life. But to ponder, and ask for that personal witness, creates a heat that changes the stagnant into eternal value.

“Revelation can come hour by hour and moment by moment as we do the right things. When women nurture as Christ nurtured, a power and peace can descend to guide when help is needed. For instance, mothers can feel help from the Spirit even when tired, noisy children are clamoring for attention, but they can be distanced from the Spirit if they lose their temper with children…. It requires a conscious effort to diminish distractions, but having the Spirit of revelation makes it possible to prevail over opposition and persist in faith through difficult days and essential routine tasks... Because personal revelation is a constantly renewable source of strength, it is possible to feel bathed in help even during turbulent times.”

Quotes taken from an address given by Julie B. Beck; “And upon the Handmaids in Those Days Will I Pour Out My Spirit”

Put Up or Shut Up

Seriously.

Times are tough. Like everyone else we've been looking for ways to trim costs, save more and live well within our means. So when the garden produces more than expected, peaches arrive by the box load, neighbors offer trees of bounty, and friends unload ripening fruit you say thank you and get busy.

First, it was peppers. These I chop and freeze, dry or can. If canning you should use a pressure cooker since they have low acidity. I don't have one and I have just used a water bath, but it's not recommended.

Next there were peaches. What we didn't eat I simply cut up into slices, added a little sugar and froze in quart freezer bags. Growing up, Mom would always can LOADS of peaches....rows and rows of the peachy fruit lined our storage room shelves. It was pretty, but my kids don't really care for canned peaches; they do love peach smoothies, so I froze most of them with just a little sugar to keep them pretty. I also made peach jam, that turned out quite tasty, by following my apricot jam recipe.

Before I was even half way through the peaches, my neighbor offered her apple and plum trees. So we (and by we, I mean me and Laser Boy) made applesauce, plum applesauce, apple pie filling and plum jelly; still too many apples left on the tree....with such cute help, I'm sure I'll just have to make more.

In the middle of all this, another neighbor calls offering three large boxes of pears that are going rotten faster than she could get to them. Hmmm, let's see, wasn't that me just praying for solutions to lower the ol'e grocery bill.....

k, I'll take 'em.

Turns out they went rotten faster than I could get them to my house (Hubs said they smelled like hooch), not sure what my well intentioned neighbor had in mind, but they did make an excellent addition to my compost pile, and with all my extra time I was able to freeze my corn before it went too mushy.

Now, I think the rush is over and I'm just dilly dallying with more peppers, green beans, basil and tomatoes; hoping it doesn't freeze until I can stock up on canned tomatoes and tomato sauce.

To be honest, I'm surprised by it all. Not that I am well taken care of, that I have come to trust, but the fact that I can.....um, can. All those Labor Day weekends spent in hard labor, helping my mom can everything you could imagine and in amounts that are now unimaginable, must have paid off.

Food on Fridays with Ann Kroeker

Trek was fun, I knew it would be, why else would so many youth continue past the cringe of tennis shoes and a skirt just to experience this adventure? Maybe it also had something to do with the hunger. Not the life stealing, 4 ounces of flour a day kind of hunger the pioneers experienced, but just as real. Pres. Mcconkie hit it on the head when he said these youth are hungry for spiritual knowledge. Some of them have been living on so much less than 4 ounces a day that they are willing to "lick the empty flour sacks" just to get a taste. On this trip there were plenty of snacks to be had, and for those who came prepared they left with tummys full and future provisions. I just feel honored to have witnessed it.

I have to admit that I was adequately fed also, some I'm still chewing on. To be in a place that felt so alive with the faithful who died there was more powerful than I expected. While we were at Martin's Cove, the weather was beautiful. It has been a very wet spring and everything was lush and green, completely oppisite to what the pioneers must have experienced, except for the solid mass of rock that sheltered the cove on the east, and the wind....not the freezing, biting wind that brought that early winter in 1856, but the sound of it as it blew over the cove seemed to carry so much more than fresh spring air. Several times it stopped me in my tracks, listening for what I thought I had heard. Then, at the Willie Handcart Memorial site, as I pulled the cart with just my girls up the hill and passed between the men with their hats off and heads bowed, I felt physical pressure all around me, like every woman who has been left to pull on their own was there. The honor was for them, and I was just a decorative whitness standing proxy, amazed by their courage to do what had to be done. These experiences would have been enough but mixed in with all the history of faith and perserverence there was still time for my own questions to be answered as I felt His peace "distil upon (my) soul as the dews from heaven."

Of course I was snapping photos all along, these are just a few....I hope the music doesn't feel irreverent, considering the quarter mile swamp littered with cow pies we trekked through it seemed appropiriate.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Just Inhale

Again and again, every day air rushes through my nose and fills my lungs and body with necessary life, making all things possible.


Inspiration gives hope, keeps things fresh and vibrant, functioning and purposeful.



The view from my parents kitchen window, the branches of the live oaks in the south with their dark bark and hanging moss, looking out at the ocean as the waves philander with my feet. More than just a view, it is a complete moment of beauty that fills my soul with fresh air and cleans out the cluttered paths of my intellect, but the real beauty of inspiration is that it can come from anywhere. A song, a thought, a memory.....all that is required is a willingness to breathe.

During my last visit home I was able to live such a moment. Something that has been going on for a long time but I hadn't been open enough to be inspired until now.

My neighbor (technically, my parents neighbor, as I have moved away, but will always be my neighbor) many years ago was inspired to take a leap of faith and save a company from going under. The company he saved by mortgaging his own farm is the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS). The NCCS was created to help support and preserve the Constitution by encouraging the public to be educated in the principals that have made the US such a strong country, and how to preserve these fundamental ideals. This is from their web page.

"A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing...that...communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?" ~ George Washington

Through the years, my neighbor has been steadily working to educate the public about the Constitution and the founding principals that make it possible....the very things we must know if we want it to continue. Not an easy task and pretty slow going at times, until recently when he received a little help from Glenn Beck, who mentioned some NCCS books (The 5000 Year Leap, The Real George Washington, The Real Thomas Jefferson, and The Real Benjamin Franklin) on his program. Since then, NCCS has been flooded with orders...more than they could keep up with. Friends, neighbors and other supporters have been volunteering a lot of time but they are still swamped. While I was visiting my parents I had the opportunity to go spend a few hours in NCCS headquarters (my neighbors home) and help out. It was an impressive operation. I put together boxes, packaged some books, organized a few invoices....a drop in the bucket I know, but I have never been thanked so many times in my life. It was truly inspiring to see a bunch farmers working together on a snowy day to protect the natural standards they could never take for granted. Who would have thought that such a far reaching, important work was going on from a simple farm house in the middle of nowhere USA?

Now I too share the word, with anyone who will listen, to not just be an active participant, but an inspired and educated participant. Inspiration has little effect if it just lingers around us. Old ideas and idle ways need to be expelled to make room for new possibilities to be inhaled, to sustain, and build something stronger.



Take a deep breath of inspiration and join Wordfull Wednesday at Chololateonmycranium.

...and so it begins, or continues...

Talk about turning over a new leaf...or many old and decaying leaves. Yes, spring is still months away but I feel the fever coming on strong.

Last spring I started a compost pile with the hope of planting my garden in soil instead of rocks. Slowly at first, it grew to a pile about two feet high. My hope still strong, I picked up some old wood pallets and talked my hubby into putting them together into some bins....and the pile continued to grow.

I knew if it was all to be usable by planting time it needed a little disturbance...mixing, chopping, adding air....

....as it is with all my new beginnings, I have strong hopes for success or at least progression, and so I keep turning them over for a new prospective. Mixing in new ideas and encouragements, chopping the bulky habits, and adding the air of experience and insight.

I have big hopes for spring and the muck merging into flourishing fruits.

Room Enough

..bucket after bucket hefted up the steep stairs, ducking to spare my head...up through the narrow opening and out into the dark night..dumping what should be held precious....

Water. Without it my home turns brown and useless, so we pray for rain and wait anxiously for our turn at the reservoir. And then it comes. It's an exciting day, the little ones in boots or even bare feet slogging through the field as I open and shut and readjust the gates trying to direct this much needed blessing. All to soon the excitement turns to panic as the water runs through our unprepared field and into our yard. More opening and closing and readjusting....but all no good..it's too much, too fast, and once again, I'm not ready. But the blessing continues to come...more than our share, more than we had asked for...

Hours after the water moves on to our neighbors, it continues to seep it's way into our basement. I can't help but think of a scripture ...

"Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of Hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." ~ Malahi 3:10

So with aching muscles I continue to bail. Being alone with my thoughts and up to my ankles in blessings I wonder again about my faith...is trust in my Savior just my vocal expression, or do I really know Him so well that I daily prepare my field to receive all He has promised? What opportunities have I missed, what blessings run away wasted into the night because I didn't believe and prepare enough to make room for them in my home?

Today I bought a pump.