Friday, March 20, 2015
New Home
MY BLOG has moved. I will no longer post new entries here. Please follow this link: The Singing FarmWife to read the blog. Also, if you are a follower and you want to continue following you'll want to link to the above address.
Friday, March 6, 2015
MY HOPE CLOSET
I have been a messy person almost all of my life. My first college roommate can attest to that. I still believe we parted ways because my clutter finally overcame her forgiving nature. Then I married my husband. While he's not a neat freak, he is far better than I am at keeping things clean. He started doing the laundry early in our marriage because he got tired of waiting for clean underwear. He keeps his tools organized, his barn feedways neat and tidy, and his truck free from trash.
Sometimes, he wakes up before I do and I can hear him puttering around downstairs. First I hear the clink and scoop of coffee being made, then I hear the rattle of the dishwasher being loaded or unloaded. When I finally make it downstairs, the kitchen often looks better than I left it.
In my defense, I have improved over time. While it's always been important to me that the public areas of our house be presentable, I have, in the last year, started making my bed every morning and, strangely, I now can't go downstairs until it's done. I've learned to fold clothes as they come out of the dryer so they won't get wrinkled, and I'm much better at cleaning the kitchen before I go to bed. But, there's one area of my life that I can't unclutter.
It's my Hope Closet. I believe every home should have a hope closet, a hope drawer, a hope bin or a hope chest. In the old days, a hope chest was a place for a woman to collect things she planned to use in her married life. That's not the kind of hope chest or closet I'm talking about.
My Hope Closet is really a junk closet, but I call it a Hope Closet because if I need something, I can always hope it's in there. Often it is. My Hope Closet is full of many of the usual things you'd expect to find: batteries, light bulbs, tools, paint, screening supplies, jars of screws, nails and fasteners. But, because it's the place I throw things when I'm not sure where to store them, it's a place full of surprises as well. I often forget what I've put in there.
When I have need of an item to finish a project, I go to my Hope Closet and dig, and sometimes I pray as I dig. I don't know what's in there, and because I don't know, I pray that I'll find what I need. Now, don't laugh, but I feel like God usually answers these silly prayers. Faith is about things unseen, and there are plenty of those in my Hope Closet.
Here's a picture of it.
If you come to visit, I will not show it to you. I'm not proud of the disarray, and if I were a complete convert to neatness, everything would be in neatly labeled boxes. Neatly labeled boxes that completely took away my ability to hope and pray for something unseen. In my life, hoping for things unseen is something I don't want to miss.
Sometimes, he wakes up before I do and I can hear him puttering around downstairs. First I hear the clink and scoop of coffee being made, then I hear the rattle of the dishwasher being loaded or unloaded. When I finally make it downstairs, the kitchen often looks better than I left it.
In my defense, I have improved over time. While it's always been important to me that the public areas of our house be presentable, I have, in the last year, started making my bed every morning and, strangely, I now can't go downstairs until it's done. I've learned to fold clothes as they come out of the dryer so they won't get wrinkled, and I'm much better at cleaning the kitchen before I go to bed. But, there's one area of my life that I can't unclutter.
It's my Hope Closet. I believe every home should have a hope closet, a hope drawer, a hope bin or a hope chest. In the old days, a hope chest was a place for a woman to collect things she planned to use in her married life. That's not the kind of hope chest or closet I'm talking about.
My Hope Closet is really a junk closet, but I call it a Hope Closet because if I need something, I can always hope it's in there. Often it is. My Hope Closet is full of many of the usual things you'd expect to find: batteries, light bulbs, tools, paint, screening supplies, jars of screws, nails and fasteners. But, because it's the place I throw things when I'm not sure where to store them, it's a place full of surprises as well. I often forget what I've put in there.
When I have need of an item to finish a project, I go to my Hope Closet and dig, and sometimes I pray as I dig. I don't know what's in there, and because I don't know, I pray that I'll find what I need. Now, don't laugh, but I feel like God usually answers these silly prayers. Faith is about things unseen, and there are plenty of those in my Hope Closet.
Here's a picture of it.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
SNOW MORE
When I was 12, going on 13, I ended my nightly prayers with a request for snow on my birthday. I am a close-to Christmas baby and I planned to carol around the neighborhood with friends to celebrate becoming a teenager. I also secretly planned to get myself a boyfriend. I had a big crush on Stewart and I was pretty sure he would offer to hold my hand if we were walking in swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps to the sound of happy carolers.
I got my wish. There were swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps, and carolers singing, but Stewart held hands with my older sister.
Snow just can't be trusted.
I don't pray for snow anymore. I know it is poor man's fertilizer, bringing nitrogen from the air down into the soil. I know it refills our aquifers so that the spring behind my house will continue to provide clear water. I know that to every thing there is a season and snow deserves its season. I even know that we don't have as much snow as we did 40 years ago and that should be cause for alarm. My husband still talks about snows that fell in November and melted in April.
I am not alarmed. I am relieved. When your driveway is over a quarter mile long and the last part is a steep hill, snow means that getting to the road is an adventure. For the first time since we've lived at the foot of this steep hill, I have a four wheel drive vehicle. I can get out when it snows, but not if the snow has drifted into swales and swells that are two or three feet deep.
So, I like snow as long as it is only two or three inches deep. I like watching it fall, twirling to the ground in soft curtains of white, as long as it ends in a couple of hours. I like my driveway, when it looks like this.
How about you? Do you still feel romantic when the snow starts swirling, or do you growl?
The weatherman is calling for 6-8 inches of snow tonight. It might swirl romantically in the glow of the porch light outside my house, but I won't be watching. I'll be curled up inside on the sofa with my true love. It turns out it doesn't take snow to make romance after all.
I got my wish. There were swirls of snow beneath glowing streetlamps, and carolers singing, but Stewart held hands with my older sister.
Snow just can't be trusted.
I don't pray for snow anymore. I know it is poor man's fertilizer, bringing nitrogen from the air down into the soil. I know it refills our aquifers so that the spring behind my house will continue to provide clear water. I know that to every thing there is a season and snow deserves its season. I even know that we don't have as much snow as we did 40 years ago and that should be cause for alarm. My husband still talks about snows that fell in November and melted in April.
I am not alarmed. I am relieved. When your driveway is over a quarter mile long and the last part is a steep hill, snow means that getting to the road is an adventure. For the first time since we've lived at the foot of this steep hill, I have a four wheel drive vehicle. I can get out when it snows, but not if the snow has drifted into swales and swells that are two or three feet deep.
So, I like snow as long as it is only two or three inches deep. I like watching it fall, twirling to the ground in soft curtains of white, as long as it ends in a couple of hours. I like my driveway, when it looks like this.
How about you? Do you still feel romantic when the snow starts swirling, or do you growl?
The weatherman is calling for 6-8 inches of snow tonight. It might swirl romantically in the glow of the porch light outside my house, but I won't be watching. I'll be curled up inside on the sofa with my true love. It turns out it doesn't take snow to make romance after all.
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