~and it was food for the soul~

The world seems to be an even more unsettled place these days.
Just when you think it cannot get worse, it does.
These times that we are living in require people to think of the positive, now more than ever.
I pray to always to do that.

     Some nights when I cannot sleep, I just start doing what was recommended to me long ago by a dear friend back home in Kansas.  I count my blessings.  Most nights it works and sooner or later I return to my slumber, but even when it doesn't at least some good comes from it.  
     
     It makes me realize just how many blessings I truly have.
     
     I learned about blessings at a very early age, simply by reading the words that were inscribed on a plate that hung on my grandmother's kitchen wall back in Halstead, Kansas.  I was just a little girl, no more than 7 years old.  One day my younger sister and I were helping our grandmother do the dinner time dishes.  What a pleasant memory that brings to my mind right now!  

     There we were, two tiny barefoot girls wearing cotton dresses and standing on kitchen stools, hands in soapy water at an old kitchen sink.  It was the kind that had just one compartment so grandmother had to put two enamelware dishpans into it.  One was for washing and the other for rinsing. Washing the dishes with Catherine Brown was such a happy time.  I loved helping her.
    
      I noticed one day as we were at the sink that there was a little plate hung on the wall.  Its inscription is one you probably all know.  It is the one that says-

"Thank God for dirty dishes, they have a tale to tell.  While other folks go hungry, we are eating very well."
     
     I remember asking Grandmother Brown what that meant.  Why should we be even thankful for dirty dishes?  She went on to explain it to the both of us little girls.  She spoke of how in the world there were people who go hungry every day, in America as well as all around the world. I was little and didn't even think that could happen.  My belly was hardly ever empty and even it was, it was not for very long.  
     
     In my little heart and mind, I never forgot that moment.  The words she told me that day have stuck with me forever.  Every once in a while I see that plate somewhere and remember the kind grandmother who made such delicious food.  It was nourishment that filled my little tummy and fed my soul as well.
     
     So today please remember what you should be thankful for.  For every mean spirited thing that you hear about on the news, in your workplace, in your home, or in your neighborhood, please pause and substitute the knowledge of something good in its place.  Counting your blessings is extremely beneficial, not only in the middle of the night when you can't go to sleep, but any time of the day.  

     It's cheaper than medicine.
     It lasts longer too.
       

 Whoever thought a basketball goal could be so romantic?  It's the place, as a matter of fact, the exact spot where Mike and I were married in May of 2013.  We went back for a visit in August of that year and stood underneath it once again.  He is my blessing and I am his.
     

     

~and it all started with a trip to a lighthouse~

Used to be, I never ventured far away from home.  I seldom went anywhere that I could not return back from in more than a day's time.  Not sure why I was like that.  I just was and for 56 years, it worked out pretty well.

Then came 2012 and Maine.

I had always wanted to see a lighthouse and for some reason it just had to be one in Maine.  I truly have no idea where that notion even came from, but I felt it so strongly that in May of 2012, I took out on my own on a cross country journey of slightly more than 1,700 miles one way.  I drove like a crazy person to get there, most days driving at least 500-600 miles in order to arrive midweek.  It was an uneventful trip, well except for the time I had to switch lanes at the last minute about 30 miles out of Boston.  Ok, and there was also a little issue with the stupid traffic in Massachusetts but I have to give myself a bit of credit.  I'd never been on a switchback road before. When I got there, I went straight to the Portland Headlight where I spent the entire afternoon being entertained by the sights, sounds, and smells of the sea.

And that was it.
My time was completed.
I had driven to Maine, witnessed the first lighthouse I had ever seen, and it was time to go home again to Kansas.

And so I did.

That little trip taught me many things about myself, the greatest of which is this.
I learned that I can do anything that I put my mind to, and with ease.  Most people thought I was crazy to go it alone, and right honestly there were times that I thought they probably were right.  Yet I made it, there and back, in less than 6 days.  I was no worse for the wear.

I had to ask a total stranger that was there if she would take a picture of me standing on the porch of the lighthouse keeper's residence.  She was glad to oblige.

It was necessary to ask for help from other folks who were visiting as well, to take my picture on the grounds.  I will always remember them because they spoke not one word of English.  They were visiting from Paris, France and since French is not my second language, it took a minute or two for the conversation to be understood.  Yet a smile is the same no matter where you are from.  They also were glad to help me.

I wonder sometimes if it weren't for the trip to Maine if I would have been brave enough to take out and do other crazy things that would come in the year following this one.  Would I have been able to muster up the courage to travel over 600 miles one way to visit Mike for the first time in Montrose? In the dead of winter?  In the middle of the night?  Over 12,000 ft. Monarch Pass?

I have to wonder.
You know?

For a Kansas farm girl who spent nearly her entire first 56 years of life staying put in the same county, I guess you could say I have come a long ways.  I made enough long trips to Colorado that first 5 months to figure that Mike and I should just get married.  Even at that, the journeys did not cease.  We moved to Texas, 800 miles away from the mountains, last summer.  It sure is different here but yet much the same as my old Kansas home.

I consider myself a fairly decent seasoned traveler now.
And it all started with a trip to a lighthouse.

~we choose to stick together~

From cold and wet north Texas, good evening everyone.

The day is winding down to its final hours and tomorrow October 13, 2016 will be in the past. Another day shall arrive to take its place and that which happened today will remain as precious memories.

This is the 998th blog post that I have written since this blog's inception, now over 5 years ago.  I can't say that I have anything profound to say tonight, but I am grateful to have had the ability to record the memories of the last 5 years of my life.  I thought about stopping when I got to the 100th one, but I didn't.  I even gave consideration to calling it "good" after I wrote my 500th one.  As it all turned out, I didn't quit.  I just kept writing.

I have written about so many things that have happened not only in my life, but in the lives of others as well.  I have written so much that sometimes when I look at the old posts, I really can't remember what they might have even been about.  It's actually kind of fun to go back and reread them as I realize the kind of life that I lived on that particular day.  I smile at some of them and remember with a profound sense of sadness at many of the others.

One thing is for certain.

I have enjoyed a marvelous and exceedingly full life.

As I look back at all the pictures that have accompanied these posts, I can't help but to be thankful for everything blessing that I've been given, as well as every heartache that I have had to bear witness to.  I picked out 10 of the old photos to share with you in this 998th posting.  It's not easy to just choose 10.  Every single picture that I used told a story on its own merit.  These were my favorites, well at least for tonight.  

Someone once asked me why it was that I wrote so much.  I often times have asked some of them why it was that they didn't write.  Mostly people have responded that they didn't know how to or there just wasn't any time left over in the already busy day.

If I could give people a bit of advice in this the 998th story to be written, then I would surely say to them the following.  

"Why not begin a diary? You don't have to do it online.  Sometimes the best of stories are written in our own handwriting in the pages of a notebook.  Think that you don't have time to do it? Do it regardless of how much time you have, even if it means that you only scrawl in a few sentences each night.  Not sure what to write?  Write what is on your mind and nestled deep inside your heart.  Don't think you are good enough to put your thoughts into words?  Try anyways!  You might be pleasantly surprised if you do.  You might regret it if you do not."

I would venture to say that a whole lot of my stories reflect around the state of my birth.  This sign means everything to me.

Often times I have written about the 9-year old girl that I used to be.  I love it when "she" comes to visit in my stories.  I'm pretty sure that I type them with a smile on my face.

This old "round head" cat sure could cause some trouble.  Wouldn't have traded her for the world.  My dear Oblio~how I loved her.  Often times she would join me, just like in this picture, as I typed my early morning blog posts from the dining room table back in Kansas.

Mostly my life has revolved around being a teacher.  So very many of my stories have reflected my feelings for what I love to describe as the "greatest and most noble" of jobs on earth.

Hey, I was heading back home to Kansas that first winter of '13, no matter what amount of snow fell from the skies.  I was determined to celebrate the holidays with my family back there.

How I love the people of my hometown.

Haven, Kansas raised me up to be the woman that I am this day.

I learned that snow and winter aren't as bad as I have always complained they were.  It was a cold and snowy day back in the mountains when this picture was taken.

Meeting Norman Horn back in the summer of '14 was a life changing experience for Mike and I.  I was so glad to be able to walk the last couple of miles with him as he left Colorado and entered Kansas.

One of the earliest pictures that was posted on this blog was this one, taken in June of 2011 while I was on the Bike Across Kansas.  It was about a hundred billion degrees in the shade that day.  

He was the blessing that God sent to me in later years.  For better or worse and all the times that come in between, we choose to stick together.

and yes, I miss the view

Sometimes, I sure do miss this view.  I can't believe that I'm saying that, especially since I spent my first 3 months of living as a newlywed and very homesick Kansas schoolteacher trying to figure out a way to go home again.  Yet, I do.

I miss the view.

There were times that I would sit at the kitchen table and look out at those snow and ice covered peaks.  They appeared as if they were part of a magical kingdom, one that protected all the inhabitants of the little place called Montrose, Colorado.  The mountains made a ring around us there in the quaint valley that we called our home,  for me over two full years.  For Mike, it was more like 20.  For as much as I hated the fact that mountain ranges and over 600 miles separated me from my beloved Kansas, I ended up loving those tall mountains in ways that I never thought I would have.

Ok, so I really do miss the view.

Mike and I left our home there now over a year and a half ago.  It was time for us to do so. Mike's job had been downsized and it really did appear that it was the moment in our lives to make a change.  That gentle "nudging" that we felt led us both to the plains of Texas and an area more familiar to me.  

So we packed up our things and we went.

This afternoon when I got home from school, Mike told me a package had come in the mail for me.  To my pleasant surprise, it was from my dear friend Debbie who teaches 3rd graders back in my old school in Olathe, Colorado.  The package contained the messages of her students (many of them were mine in the first grade, 2 years back) for my students at Big Pasture School.  Nearly 800 miles separate us now but holding that package of letters in my hand made me almost feel as if it wasn't so far after all.  

For that, I give thanks.

I'm looking forward to sharing the letters tomorrow with the 19 children along the Red River who now call me "teacher".  I want them to know about a wonderful state, a fine community of learners, and the people I called my "family" back there in southwestern Colorado.  

Sometimes the miles come between us.
Sometimes it seems like "forever" until I will see those good people again.
Yet the love of friends and memories of a life now lived in a different state are held tightly in our hearts.  Nothing can really separate us.

Nothing.

                         Before I was a Big Pasture Ranger, I was once an Olathe Pirate.

~and life goes on~

     October is taking no time at all in passing by us as autumn leaves begin to turn colors and fall quietly to the ground. The weather is getting slightly cooler here in our part of this world, a gentle reminder to us that sooner or later we will begin to see these beautiful days come to a close.  

     It might not seem like it right now, but one thing is true.  Winter will not be all that far behind.

     I love autumn and perhaps it is because in the seasons of our human lives, this nearly 61-year old woman finds herself in it.  I no longer am in my sweet spring or  joyous summer.  Those days are long gone and now just a memory tucked away deep in my heart.  They were good times for the most part with only a scattering of days that brought sadness or remorse to me.  I figure I've been in autumn for more than a day or two and sooner or later, even I shall see the winter time coming.

     I'm not sure if I am ready or not.
     I hope to be.

     Nearly 4 years ago, I made the decision to drive over 600 miles from my home in south central Kansas to a place I had never heard of before.  Montrose, Colorado was just a spot on the map and where this boy I once knew of from "the land of long ago and far, far away" was living.  We had connected online, never imagining that the other person was even around.  In the middle of the night and in the dead of winter, I made the journey to meet the man who would soon become my husband.  People thought I was crazy to traverse over 12,000 feet high Monarch Mountain alone in ice and snow.  I believe they were right.  

     I was crazy.

     The other day, as often times we do, Mike and I looked at one another.  We marveled at the fact that in our late years of life, the good Lord above decided that we should meet.  It was crazy to think that it worked out the way it did.  It hasn't always been easy and I'd be lying if I told you that it was.  Especially in the early weeks and months, it was very hard. I would have thrown in the towel numerous times because of such extreme homesickness and loneliness for the only life I ever knew, the one that I left behind in Kansas.  Thankfully, I stuck it out and now in just a couple of months more, Mike and I will celebrate the 4th anniversary of that first long trip of many from Kansas to Colorado.

     We are still married.  

     I read the words that a friend from back home in Kansas wrote when he said that he felt like he was "racing towards the end of life".  I too feel the very same way sometimes.  The first 61 years seem to have flown by with little consideration for how fast the time was going.  I doubt the remaining ones will go by any slower.  

     One thing I take solace in.
     I no longer have to go through them alone.

     Sometimes Mike and I fall asleep in our recliners while we are watching the 5 o'clock news.  Every once in a while, one of us has to help the other with some issue of changing health.  We laugh at ourselves as we determine which one has forgotten the most that day.  We sometimes shed a tear or two in sadness at a movie we watch on television that depicts our own demise some day.  We are growing older together and following the plan that we made when we first left our mountain home and landed upon the plains of northern Texas.  We decided that no matter what happened, one thing would remain for sure.

     We would hold hands and stick together.  
     That plan hasn't failed us yet.
     

In March of 2013, Mike tried to teach me this game called Cribbage.  He thought it was wonderful, but I wasn't too crazy about it.  I stuck with it though.  We learned to have fun doing things that didn't cost much money to do.

We liked to build fires in the fire pit back in Montrose, especially on crisp and chilly autumn evenings.

Our first date was a day trip to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, a place that we visited often while we lived there in Colorado.

We married one another underneath a basketball goal in the gymnasium of the elementary school that I taught at in Kansas.  Our witnesses were about 200 or so of the sweetest children, friends and family who stood with us that day back in May of 2013.

And life goes on.

     

~and they were right~

So I'd like to say something from the "get go".
I am not an artist.  
I've never painted a portrait nor have I ever thrown clay to make a beautiful piece of pottery.
Ok, once I did make a pinch pot in the fourth grade but it was probably a disaster.
As far as having any real artistic talents, I have none.

That's why it seems so weird that I would even write this post.

Earlier this week, I had my 3rd grade students at Big Pasture Elementary make a fall picture.  It was my intent to take their works of art down to the store that Mike manages here in town and put them on display for the month of October.  I wasn't really sure what kind of fall picture to have them make, but after looking online for a while I came up with the idea of just a simple tree with torn construction paper leaves upon it.  It seemed easy enough and so we set to work.

Not sure how it came about, but one of the kids asked why I wasn't making a picture.  I'm sure the first words that came out of my mouth were something like....

"I'm not an artist.  I don't make good trees."

But you know how kids are.  A couple more of them asked me to make one too and so what else could I do?  I got the paper and set about making one of my own.  At first it seemed quite ridiculous.  In 39 years of teaching I have never once drawn a picture alongside of my students. In my mind, I already had the notion that whatever I drew would look absolutely silly and perhaps even unidentifiable.  Yet with pencil and crayons at the ready, I set about the task.  I shuddered to think about what the finished product might look like.  I prayed that the 8-year olds in my class would not laugh at it and the crazy thing is this.....

They said it looked nice.

And because they said it looked nice, I began to believe it myself.  Yesterday I left it in its half finished state, taped to the white board in my room.  When I got to school this morning, I decided "what the heck?" and finished it up.  There I was at 6:00 in the morning sitting at my teacher's desk with a crayon in my hand adding the last minute details that I wanted to include. In its finished form, it looked simple at best but there was something that I liked about it.  I can't tell you what it was, but something was there that I had never seen before.

I had actually drawn a tree and the weird thing was this.
It really appeared to be a tree.

Those 19 children have no idea how their kind words affected me yesterday.  I went from a person nearly 61 years old who had never once wanted to show anything she did to another person to one who thought that maybe there was hope for her after all.  I was so surprised at how my fall tree turned out, that I asked a young man in my classroom to take a picture of me holding it.  I might just hold on to that picture in the years yet to come as a reminder to me that it really is never too late to try something new.  

I won't make my living in the art world and plan to leave the serious stuff to the people whose God given talents lend them towards that profession.  But you know what?  I won't be afraid to try and draw something again the future and share it with the people around me.  Out of the mouths of innocent little children, those words came yesterday.

"Mrs. Renfro, that is a really nice tree you drew!"
And you know what?
They were right!

~and they called me their own~

I love October.
Always have.  Always will.

It's my birthday month and come the 26th, I shall push onward into the decade of my 60's.  Last year as I "rounded up to the nearest 10", it was a little bit on the unnerving side.  I mean for heaven's sake, I was now 60 years old.  Forget not being a teenager dragging Main Street in Hutchinson with my friends on Saturday night.  I was no longer even in my 50's.  It was a sobering thought.

I pushed on.

As I have become older, I have gained even more respect for my parents who brought me, their 6th child out of 7, into the world that beautiful Wednesday morning in the autumn of 1955. They already had 5 hungry mouths to feed at home.  Chances are good that they really didn't need another one.  Yet because they loved each other, they chose to have me.  I was wanted by them and for that I will always be in grateful remembrance.  

I think of those two people, the parents that God chose for me, so very often.  They always come to mind in October as I prepare myself for the anniversary of the day of my birth.  It is with deep love that I recall them and the sacrifices they made so that I could "be".  

Birthdays were never done on the grand scale that parents celebrate that special occasion  for their children these days.  Things were always rather low key.  John and Lois Scott had a huge family to take care of and I'm sure it took every bit of their money to do so.  That didn't stop them from celebrating the days of their children's birth.  Mom always made a birthday cake for me and since I was born in the month of Halloween, my cake was always a pumpkin shaped one when I celebrated as a child.  She would somehow manage to magically turn that food coloring combination into jack-o-lantern orange.  She would outline the face with black licorice strings and put in however many candles I might be that year.  It was very special.  Later, when I was grown and had little children on my own, I requested a different kind of cake.  Mom had the greatest recipe for applesauce sheet cake that she found in the Capper's Weekly.  It turned into one of my very favorite ones.  She knew to never put raisins in it nor to frost it with anything.  It was great and I will always remember it in my heart.

Those days were precious.  
I just didn't know how precious they were at the time.

My parents have both died now.  I have only a few things left that my mom gave to me as birthday gifts over the years that have gone by.  Although they are of little value to anyone else, they are worth everything to me.  I shall never part with them.

I have outlived the age that my father had and in 26 more years if I am still around, I shall have surpassed the age that my mother received.  No matter how old I am, I still try to do the things that would make both of them proud of me.  I would want them to know that I didn't waste the years that I have been given.  I have put everything I had into them and tried to never look back with regret.

61 years ago this month, a little girl arrived.  Chances are good that she cried instead of sleeping all night, needed her diapers changed, was fussy, got hungry, and probably smiled a whole lot too.  I'm glad that they chose me and even more glad that they called me their own. 

Beautiful trees like this one surround the final place of rest for my folks back home in Kansas. October is the month of gorgeous trees.  I love seeing that robin's egg blue sky peek through the leaves.  If there was ever a month that I would like to give a hug to, it would be sweet October.