Weeds in our journey

Once again it's been far to long to since I visited here...Life is just busy, or rather I should say full. So here's my update and thoughts.

We bought a buck to breed to our doe's to this fall. We had intended to get 2 bucks, brothers, but with only 3 doe's we decided against that. We will add more bucks as we expand our herd a bit.

Our bee hive is flourishing and we are enjoying having bees and honey!

We had planned on getting more chickens, but talked myself out of it. I'm just not ready to be tied down with them again. I am enjoying my freedom to much! LOL

Farm man and I became grandparents for the 4th time in April.  A little girl named Remi. She just turned 2 months old and is a beautiful little lady. We are enjoying our blessings.

We have also been doing some light traveling in recent months delivering the puppies we sell. We are enjoying the freedom we have found since becoming empty nesters. :)

As usual life has had plenty to teach us and keep us busy here on the homestead. The one year anniversary of my friends death, the 2 year anniversary of my dads passing and the 4 year anniversary of leaving our church is all upon us...it certainly makes me weepy...so much loss in a short period of time. I am slowly working through all the emotions and changes that come from loss. I feel its been a very slow process but yet it also seems like yesterday all this happened. 

This morning as I checked my email there was an email from a person whose writings I subscribe to. It was so timely and spoke volumes. I want to share a snippit here...

The writer was talking abut where she lived as a child and all the beautiful gardens that once thrived there. Over the years they had become unkempt and overgrown. Someone had been working on restoring the gardens and said to her..

"You can't just go in with a garden like this and start tearing things out-everything would die off. You've got to go slowly and allow the secrets of of the garden to reveal themselves to you."

Wow! Profound! I feel that's kinda how my life has been for the past 4 years...Just bumbling around throwing out this and that with no rhyme or reason hoping against the odds all this pain and confusion would just go away... I've been so busy trying to rid all this pain that i've not taken the time to see the beauty or wisdom in all of this...and yes, there is beauty and wisdom in our pain...just like the garden above, many times we focus on the weeds to the point we can't see the beauty that lies just behind them...we think the only way to 'fix it" it to tear everything out and start over when in reality we just need to slow down and begin the daunting task of removing the weeds and keep the beautiful growth that lies just behind them. Weeding, as most of us know is a painful and slow process, sometimes it feels overwhelming and we simply just don't where to start...I think that's kind of been where my mindset has been..."where do I start"...truthfully, you just pick a place and start and slowly working to dig out all the weeds and sometimes very deep roots...it is painstaking...we will toil and sweat and want to give up..but we must stay at it to ever find the all the beauty that lies just behind the weeds...slowly we will begin to see to progress and the beauty will begin to emerge...all the effort will then be worth it...most of the time in the end we will come to find all the work put into weeding becomes so minimal compared to the radiance of the beauty left behind...We find it was all so worth it...

I have done a lot of weeding over the past 4 years, and it's been hard, back breaking work...I have discovered my focus has been so much on the weeds I have failed to see my progress in my journey...My brother pointed out to me in a conversation the other day I have come a long way and have been able to change my perspective so much...I guess because i've been in the trenches trying to dig my way out I forgot to stop and look at the beauty left behind in the wake of my weeding...and there is beauty, learning and much wisdom i've gained over the years...I just need a new perspective...I need to change my focus from a negative to a positive and realize our journey is for a reason...be it painful, joyful, easy, hard, ugly, pretty...its all for our benefit...All the hard work of weeding pays off with a bountiful harvest...so it is with our life journey...We can't appreciate the beauty if we never have weeds. We need to be grateful and thankful for the weeds in our journey!

Until next time...
Kris