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What makes country music different from any other genre of music is the honest, emotional, stories that are consistent across all demographics.  The great songwriter, Harlan Howard, described country music as “Three Chords and the Truth”. The songs we hear in country music tell stories about love and loss, and every decade or so, a song is written that makes us hold our breath with lyrics that rip open a corner of our hearts.  This song yanks buried emotions to the surface and allows us to empathize with the song-writer/singer on a very personal depth. Craig Morgan has recently written and recorded a song that will be remembered alongside the select few songs that are woven into the fabric of what makes up country music.

Progress, not perfection. This has been a theme in our lives lately. Our good friend Deborah is a nutritionist we are working with and she introduced us to this mantra which has definitely been an encouragement over the past few weeks.

This weekend was hard. I’ve been dreading it for months. I didn’t grow up hunting animals. I’ve never eaten an animal that I’ve harvested. I do remember my brother cleaning a deer at my Grandparents’ house one Thanksgiving. It was a pretty traumatic experience just being on the periphery. It wasn’t a process I ever wanted to participate in. When we bought the farm, one of our goals was to be self-sustainable. We dreamed of stocking our pantry and our freezer with vegetables and meat that we had grown here on the farm. We know we’ll always have to go to the grocery store for certain things. After all, we don’t grow avocados in Arkansas. And everybody loves guacamole, right?

“These things do we earnestly desire:

A clear vision of life, that with gracious and kindly hearts we may share both joy and sorrow and bring into living reality the Sisterhood of women. An appreciation of real merit and worth, steadfastness of soul, that without bitterness or defeat we may encounter misfortune and with humility meet success. These things, O Lord, help us to instill within our hearts that we may grow in courage and graciousness and peace.”

Life is hard.   Stuff happens.

I say stuff because we try to be family friendly in our writing, but we all know what the word I really mean when I use stuff. 

I love new back packs. I love new binders and new pencils. I love note cards….only the lined ones, of course. I love freshly sharpened pencils and most of all, I really love blank notebook paper. I remember growing up and each year before school started, we would make a trip to Walmart or the Dollar Store to pick out school supplies. I loved getting home to bags of supplies that needed to be organized and carefully placed in my brand new back pack.