Oliver's Marble Shooter

Check Out Oliver's Marble Shooter in Snapshots!

Coming To Terms

I was a vegetarian for a short period of time during my college years. Instead of thinking I had gone off the deep end, my sweet mother experimented with tofu and veggies and we still make some of the dishes discovered in those days.

Then I met Travis, and well...let's just say it never would have worked for him to have married a vegetarian. I willingly began to eat meat again, but I had come to terms with the fact that an animal has to die for me to gain that nourishment.

That was an important step for me. The Lord knew I would be bearing many sons who,like their father, would embrace the outdoor world in all its capacities: hunting, fishing, trapping, crabbing...Imagine if I had never come to terms with what has to happen when I choose to eat a hamburger!

It's interesting how the same people who will sit and eat a steak will think it's wrong to hunt. An animal still has to die to provide that steak...and I have accepted that.

Coming to terms with raising my own animals for food has taken that acceptance to a whole new level. Chestnut, Penny's calf, was born a year and a half ago. I knew when he was born that we would be raising him for food. But I still found myself thinking that I would not be able to eat the meat that his life afforded.

Even a week ago, as I drove to pick up hundreds of pounds of beef to fill our freezer, I didn't think I would be able to eat that meat. Then Oliver said something to me that changed my whole perception. "Mom," he said, "The people who say we shouldn't eat meat aren't thinkning right, because God provided animals for us to feed us and give us protein. It says that right in the Bible."

Gulp. yes....God did do that. Suddenly I realized that I needed to be filled with thanksgiving, not hesitation, for what God has generously provided for us! I am not making a statement against vegetarianism; rather I am reaffirming the rightness and goodness of allowing God to provide for my family.

There is a profound thanks and appreciation that comes from nurturing and sustaining that which God provides. Whether it is the tomato swelling ripe in the garden, or the calf nursing in the pasture,it is evident that God has given us a share in his Dominion (ref Genesis 1:26), a part in his creative process.

Not all of us can raise our own animals (or would want to), and many of us can't even have our own gardens. However, we can still acknowledge God as the provider of all and thank Him for allowing us to take part in nourishing the very food that sustains our existence.

Because Most of Our Days Are Made Of Simple Moments...

Here is what I hope to become a record of our days...

Snapshots

And this may not interest you, but I wanted to invite you...Of course!

A Little About The Garden

Ben and Will took over the gardening this year while their dad was away......
It looks like Dad might be out of a job next Summer!

Here is Will with his abundant peppers....I think he had ten different varieties. He enjoyed 'pepper sandwiches' for lunch all Summer. (Notice John Paul poking his head in the doorway.)

The freezer is filled with tomatoes, peppers, and green beans. The pantry is loaded with jars of salsa...our favorite. Some of the tomatoes were grown from heirloom seeds that have been in this community for years. The Ox heart tomato, a hearty flavorful tomato shaped like an Ox heart, has been passed on from friend to friend. The friend that gave me our plants asked me to harvest the seeds so that we can have more plants next year. I saved the seeds on a small square of paper towel and put them in an envelope for her. I think that this 'seed sharing' is the essence of what I love about living in Deerfield. It truly is a community.

Finding The Quiet Places

"Deserts, silence, solitudes are not necessarily places but states of mind and heart. These deserts can be found in the midst of the city, and in the every day of our lives. We need only to look for them and realize our tremendous need for them. They will be small solitudes, little deserts, tiny pools of silence, but the experience they will bring, if we are disposed to enter them, may be as exultant and as holy as all the deserts of the world, even the one God himself entered. For it is God who makes solitude, deserts, and silences holy."
~Catherine de Hueck Doherty

The quietude of every day unfolds in moments too numerous to count; the infinitesimal grandeur explodes in gentle silences, quenching our thirsty souls.

My prayer:
 "Make me still, Lord. I want to know You. You are God!"
 (ref Psalm 46:10)

Will you join me and find some quiet places in your day?

"Stand still,and allow the strange deadly restlessness of our tragic age to fall away like the worn-out dusty cloak that it is- a cloak that was once considered beautiful. The restlessness was considered the magic cloak of tomorrow, but now in reality, we see it for what it is: a running away from oneself, a turning from that journey inward that all men must undertake to meet God dwelling within the depths of their souls."

~Catherine de Hueck Doherty