Mosaic Momma

The other day I was in the shower, where I do my best thinking, probably because it's kid-free and somewhat quiet, and the lyric from a beloved hymn , Great Is Thy Faithfulness , came to mind. "Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow...." You see, I had been thinking a lot about fear and anxiety. I have had some hectic and crazy days and have spent my fair share worrying about how to get all that I need to do in the next several weeks. I was not alone in my worrying...I had also spoken with two kindreds who were also walking through similar things. All of us super planners, the fear of the unknown and unplannable was almost paralyzing. As I thought about that line, I realized that what I had been wanting was strength for tomorrow and next week and next month. But as the song so eloquently says, the strength is not in tomorrow, it's in today . Yes, there is bright hope for tomorrow because my faith is in my great and faithful God. But there i...

It's hard work owning a farm. I knew this going into it, but I think I might have romanticized it a teensy bit when everything was well-tended and move-in ready. The reality is that it takes a lot of work to keep everything looking as ideal as it first did. Most weekends will find us outside doing all sorts of farm chores. We have whacked walnut shells out of a tree, pruned trees in the orchard, picked up massive amounts of citrus off the ground and off of trees, pruned grape vines, pulled tumbleweeds, converted an outbuilding to a chicken house, created an animal enclosure, repaired the animal enclosure, modified the animal enclosure, etc. Today was like most weekends and as I was getting ready to shower off the grime, I thought about what we had spent our hours on outside and realized that to anyone else, it would like we hadn't done a thing. Because all of the work we did was hidden. Literally hidden. We have had some losses recently. First it was our one ...

Today was an idyllic day out on the farm. It had the potential to be a heart-breaker when we first arrived home after a full day of enrichment classes in town. I drove around our oval driveway to my spot in front of the house and did a double take when I realized that I was looking at goats feasting on weedy goodness in front of me. Meaning...they weren't nestled safely away in their enclosure. Meaning, who knows when they got out, how they got out and how long they had been wandering. While I was thankful that they were still alive and not goat roadkill (we have no fence around our property...yet), my first thought after was for our poor surviving seven chickens. As I posted on Saturday , we are down by three after discovering that our youngest dog (a stray we brought back from a death by Parvo and adopted) was indeed getting into the enclosure and killing our chickens. While we did our best to secure the area around the enclosure to keep him from being a...

Days like these, I wish I had been smart enough when my kids were smaller to buy one of those oversized rulers above that crafty people make out of reclaimed wood. I wish I would have plunked down the money and ordered one or made one and recorded the progress of my sweet babies growing. I wish I could have brought that thing with me and found a home for it in our new old farmhouse. At the very least, I wish I would have thought to snap a photo of the small piece of wall that served as a measuring post in our former house. Mostly I wish that time would freeze and let me catch my breath for a second. This growing up stuff is wrecking havoc on the emotional well-being of this momma. Tonight I watched my eldest daughter transform from a child to a full-fledged babysitter. It was bound to happen someday. I just can't believe someday is...now. It happened as nonchalantly as the tule fog has been rolling in lately to surround our farmhouse. I was chatting wi...