I'm HERE!

Well, this is irritating!  I just erased several hours of the most FABULOUS writing the world has ever seen.   Or at least  that have been written on my blog.  I hate that ....

Why can't you recall all the words you just composed? Where do those clever sentences go to die if not in your brain somewhere?  Should I be composing in Word... would it still be a blog?  Aren't you supposed to just jot down pithy observations? In short bites.  I do not blog... I wander and meander and stammer through the written English language.  Thanks for hanging in with me. You missed some great sentences. sigh....


I have answered my own rhetorical question- what DO you do in Yankton, SD?.  Turns out Yankton is the of Cow Capital of South Dakota.  I love cows. My daddy was a dairy farm.

THIS is a cow!  

Bessie, the All American COW! 

South Dakota has a variety of climates. The Eastern side is enjoying an extended winter. ha!

Clyde does not mind the snow. Clyde has four wheel drive. 

Abandoned Houses 

I love old abandoned houses.  They speak in sad whispers of families who have moved on, dreams that have ended and land  slowly returning to prairie.  Why would anyone love that sadness?   Maybe I like thinking of the lives that were lived in those places. Maybe the families moved out to nicer, more modern homes.  Maybe the children moved their parents out of the old homesteads into warm,  safe homes.  The storyteller in me just wonders.... 

I love old barns even more than old houses.... I want a barn someday.

 Pensive Musings from a gray Day

As I drove across the plains on a cold, gray day, I was more pensive than funny.  I drove on back roads and through small towns.  A grim small world. When you don't know what you're missing, are you more content with your world?  Was life easier when you couldn't connect to the outside world?   Do kids in rural South Dakota watch HBO and wonder what life is like outside Bonesteel, South Dakota? A generation ago you just followed in your father's footsteps or married the boy who kissed you in junior high. Life may have seemed small but you knew you had a place in your community. But clearly from all the abandoned houses I could have spent hours photographing,  community in eastern South Dakota has seen plenty of changes.

So how do we live content in the world where God places us? Should we resist exposure to the world by what we watch, what we google, what we long for?  Or should we break free of the small world that confines us, that we think is keeping us from God's "big plan" for our lives?  What about the community we live in or leave behind? Who will show them Jesus with skin on?  He's our example and lived simply and seemed to spend most of his adulthood wandering around his small world.


Today all I know  is that life is a larger banquet than I ever thought. Life works for different people in different ways.   Life has seasons that change and I am learning to accept those changes.


       If I sense God's call to leave and wander and you sense His call to stay and "bloom" - we, members of the Body of Christ, are all called to be His light in our worlds.  And we can all chose to be content. Chose to be grateful for the blessings on the way. Chose to recognize His hand in each day and each mile.  Chose to be Light whether you are wandering or not. 

Light

I love light.   I love light glinting on water or filtering through baby green, spring branches.
               I love the way it reveals the structure of trees in the winter.
                                    I love the afternoon light that makes the world glow.

I love the golden hills of western South Dakota. I feel so grounded and secure here. Who knew?