Heart Healing

 Promises Found Again Atop Dew-Painted Flowers

If staying busy is one way to help a hurting heart heal, then here on the farm we're in the midst of an intensive therapy session. 

The hay in the center pasture needs cutting and baling, as of last night three rows of green beans need harvesting, zucchini, peppers, and cukes are beginning to produce and begging to be eaten or put up for later, more stalls need cleaning, there's manure to be spread on the previously cut outer hay field, weeds need pulling.... and those are just a few of the "normal" We're-Now-in-Full-Swing-Summer tasks vying for the application of our busy hands. 

In the meantime, there's also a barn full of equipment to set up and rearrange ahead of two large events at the farm coming up in August - a family reunion, and the following weekend the second annual Church Service at the Farm, complete with potluck meal and fellowship afterward - and of course several other projects, soap-selling opportunities to arrange, cheese and soap to make, five young bucklings yet to sell..... And amidst it all, the fun, family, and friend-packed weekends of Summer. 

 Sometimes just the thought of it all overwhelms. But it does get easier, with practice and time, to just keep pulling on the muck boots and doing something each day to keep us moving forward.

What does not get easier, ever, is losing one of the beloved creatures who complete our farm family. We know the full cycle of life is "just part of life on a farm," and we fully realize, just like us, our four-legged, and some feathered, family members will not live on this earth forever. But it still jaggedly scars another portion of our hearts when we must walk through the difficult part of that cycle, especially with one as special to us as Spice, one of our original four goats.

We allow ourselves time to adapt to the new picture of life, and cry in both sadness and fond memories, but as the worn out cliche aptly expresses, Life does go on. Different now, true, but going on.

So, this morning as the golden rows of sunrise once again fell across the pasture until they lit up all of the life teeming there, and the last ribbons of the night's fog disappeared, I took a few moments to soak in the astounding beauty of everything shining under a fresh coating of heavy dew, and still, even now, ever reaching up, up, up with purpose and promise.

And I consciously surrendered the doubts and guilt and grief that would cripple, and thanked God for the myriad tangible ways He daily continues to confirm our place and purpose here on the farm in His plan for our lives.

And with honor and reverence for what was, Life began to move again, even in my healing heart.