Today is the day after Donna, my sister, passed two years ago. Time does heal, just like our maker says, we do move on, slowly, sadly at first with great trepidation, but forward we plunder. This is my Jericho week, I am in the mountains with friends, hoping to rebuild the walls of my life, fresh and new, strong and true.
The steady, hard rain rolls in buckets from the sky, noisy and in charge of this day. The rain creates a grey screen in front of the mountains clouding my clean view. There are no cows in the yard today, the rain dominates, it even drowns out the creek’s rumblings. My son loves a rainy day, I’m on the fence with this one, but give me a tin roof and comfy chair and you might persuade me.
Being here in the middle of God’s country, makes me feel grounded and secure. Last night we hiked the dirt road strewn with cow pilings down to the vast garden. It has been a garden for 200 years in the same spot. Armed with our plastic grocery bags we were aiming to pluck our dinner right smack dab out of the dark rich soil. Snap beans, tomatoes, peppers, sweet corn, potatoes and black eyed peas all anxiously waiting for our arrival. With every bean I popped off the vine a memory surfaced of working my Mammy’s farm. Our dinner that night was a bounty, so wonderful we posted pictures of it. My Mammy would have been so proud, our long wood table, like hers, was covered with our produce- waiting silently for our blessing. After devouring the final chapter of our meal, moist cake with creamy chocolate icing, we all sat around a small round table and rested, our music was the evening bugs concert.
This morning as I allow the drumming rain to keep my heart’s rhythm to a peaceful steady beat I realized this has been the best two nights sleep I have had in a very long time! As I walked through all the possible reasons for that in my mind, what popped up is simply that it is peaceful here.
A few years ago, I was in this same breath taking Valley an hour or so east and God spoke to me. It was a vast meadow at a vineyard, filled beyond description with tall rustling wheat and wild grasses and I was standing in it, just looking up at the big sky when He moved me. His whispered words, “the winds of change are coming..” set me on a course that forever changed my life. So many things happened after those words, I can not tell of them in this one story. Death, births, a wedding or two, cancer, loss, financial ruin, pain of a sick child and more, but with each one I did as God whispered and “rested in His peace.”
“For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land-a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills.” Deuteronomy 8:7
Right before our trip to these mountains, His sweet whisper came upon me again…”you are going to write it in the valley, it is where I began my work in you.” Wow, is what came to mind, and wow is God amazing or what! So, here I am sitting on the old grey wooden porch, with my coffee, writing….just like He told me I would, thanking Him out loud for the gift He gave me. Building my life with His word, brick by brick armed with the assurance of His peace.
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