Learning from the past and looking ahead

 

The past year has been full of wonderful memories and struggles of hard work physically and emotionally and much opportunity to learn from it all.  With every life giving moment, either in joy or sorrow, we are blessed.  Each step of our journey is taken in faith.  

Looking into the next year, we are already planning where to make room for more garden area, what to plant, when to plant it, how to make some extra income from our homegrown and homemade things and the immediate pending chore is simplify, simplify, simplify.  God has placed this issue heavily upon my heart and it is my time to act on it.  Plus, just recently we faced some extremely strong, tornado producing storms where we did lose some fellow Ozarkers.  So much property lost and lives left to rebuild.  We were blessed

by being missed, barely, but missed......again.  It is at these times, in the wee hours of the morning, when the power goes out and we are grabbing what needs to be grabbed, herding the children into the basement and settling in to find out which way the tornado is headed, that we remember that the batteries are dead, or we are out of candles etc.  Not a good time to discover that we should've been better prepared.  Especially when we know that we live in tornado alley.

We face another late winter and spring that promise to have us in the same situation again and I am determined to be prepared.  One late winter, we spent the entire night in the basement while eleven tornadoes passed over and around us.  The wind and hail was so strong and the house creaked so loudly, I just knew the next sound I was going to hear was it ripping apart.  To everyone that has heard that sound, my heart goes out to you.  I pray I never hear that sound.  So this is another issue that I am going to tackle, being prepared for the inevitable.  I understand my friends and others who have learned to prepare for a food shortage, I tend to feel the same anxiety and believe whole heartedly in stocking up for the winter until the following harvest, but past that, my trust is in the Lord, however, when I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we will be without power, we will be in harms way, action must be taken to prepare.  On the list of things this year......a root cellar/tornado shelter.  Living in the Ozarks, it has been proven time and again that even a basement does not provide safety.  So if we are able and the good Lord is willing, we will have a safe haven by the next tornado season, plus an excellent place for storage.  

Today, I am blessed to be spending time with my precious loving husband, my most precious daughter and our youngest spitfire of a grandson who is a delight and I feel is one of God's rewards to me.  'Children's children are the crown of old men; and the glory of children are their fathers.'  Proverbs 17:6   

Mine are my crown.  

The chickens are fed, the bread is in the oven, the fire is warm and chicken stew is in the slow cooker.....what a peaceful way to begin the new year!

Irish Blessing:

May the road rise to meet you.

May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
And the rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.