Author Archives: Cassandra

About Cassandra

Writing's a bit like cutting off a slice of your heart, setting it on your prettiest napkin then laying it out on the kitchen table for the world to dissect. And I can't imagine ever not doing it. I love Jesus, my big strong husband, the four kids God gave us, the people He puts in our path and the critters on this crazy little farm. It's my heart's delight and drive to write down the days as I journey with them all.

Time for a Spring Sale!

Not only is it spring break…not only are our days getting longer, (YAY sun!) but our little Facebook page just broke the 100-likes mark! Woo hoo!

Now, that might not seem like a lot in big-shot world, but to this small fries writer gal, it’s a milestone!

Sounds like a good reason to have a celebratory sale 🙂

The next ten orders of print books placed from my website (Here ) will receive one free book with each order. (Limit one free book per customer please!)

And if you’ve read Annie Spruce, would you consider posting a review on either Goodreads or Amazon? It delights my heart to hear how this little story has touched others, and it helps to spread the word and make it easier to share the goodness of it.

{{Due to Amazon’s regulations, I can’t offer Kindle sales..YET. Toward the end of March, that option will be available to me though!}}

Happy Spring from our home to yours ❤

Purchase Annie Spruce, The Dog That Didn’t Die – Print Version or e-Book

Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine – {{or Happy Whelping Day Annie!}}

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Guess what happened five years ago today at our house?

If you’ve read our little book, you know EXACTLY what happened that February night in the guest room of our home.

And that means we have some birthdays to celebrate.

It also means that our Annie, the best we can tell, is at least seven years old, and could be as old as ten.

She is spry…she is youthful.

I can’t ever imagine her old.

But I’ve been noticing that she’s a little slower to wake in the mornings.

She’s starting to get those fatty old-lady moles here and there on her svelte body.

And she sleeps through a lot of little disturbances that once would wake her.

Our old dogs…they twist our heart up in ways that only an old dog can, don’t they?

I know there will come a day when we’ll have to say goodbye to yet another furry friend, this eccentric and beautiful creature God brought into our family’s life…but until then, I’m thankful for her, for her pup, and for the lessons they both continue to teach us. I can’t imagine our world without our Annie in it.

How old is YOUR pooch?

Purchase Annie Spruce, The Dog That Didn’t Die – Print version or e-Book

~

He said women think about theyselves when menfolk ain’t around
And friends are hard to find when they discover that you’re down
He said I tried it all when I was young and in my natural prime
Now it’s old dogs and children and watermelon wine
Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes
God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate
When he moved away I found my pen and copied down that line
‘Bout old dogs and children and watermelon wine

~Tom T. Hall

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FU_TuwM2Dw

Mama’s Bed

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Dragging out an old piece today about my littlest boy. Because somehow, he’s almost seven.

Because somehow, there’s a place in the heart of a mama that beats just a little differently for her youngest.

Because somehow, today, my baby big boy pulled the heavy sled when he went ice fishing with the menfolk. And he did it all.by.himself.

That there is a big day for my little man.

My baby grew a few inches today.

I’d had it!

I dismissed him from the table, tired, fed up, and just plain sick of all the fork banging, peanut butter in the hair, fingers splashing through the cup of milk. I just wanted to eat my broccolli in peace. It’d only been five minutes since we sat down….

He exhausts me.

“Want DOWNNN!” He screeches at me.

I correct him. “‘May I be excused’ is what we say.”

“Scoose?” His barely audible mumble passes my lower than ever standards.

Frustrated, beat down and just plain old tired of him, I forget my smile and tell him to go get in bed. “It’s naptime. Go on. I’ll be in in a minute.”

I breathe deep, try to relax. Try to remember he’s not yet three. Try to remember he’s a boy after all. Try to remember what everyone tells me…”He sure is busy.”

It’s quiet in there.

Broccoli done, table cleared of stickiness, I head that way, anticipating some new and time-consuming mess, wondering if the ten minutes of quiet was worth what was waiting for me.

Not expecting him to have crawled up into his crib, I check his favorite place, the girls’ room. Empty.

His next favorite snuggle spot, big brother’s bed, remains neatly made.

Where is he?

I wander to the next room.

A little voice….”Mama?”…

I walk through the doorway to my room and turn to leave, seeing it’s dark and empty.

Until I spot just the tiniest little mound…

“Levi?”

His curly head looks over the edge of the comforter. In the middle of the queen bed, he’s lost in a sea of pillow and Softie; he’s dragged his favorite brown blanket along.

My heart melts at his smallness.

I’m amazed at how this bustly, rough and tough, never-quite-seems-to-listen-to-me and never-quite-seems-to-sit-still kid, in all his sweetness, tried his best to obey and go to bed just like Mama told him.

Even though it wasn’t his bed.

It was bed.

“You’re a good boy Levi.” I kiss his curls and soak up his big brown eyes.

He whispers to me in his sleepy little voice…

“Mama’s bed”.

How Marvelous

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Amazing how just a few notes on the piano at church can move a big ol gal like me to a whole different place. Just like being picked up and before I know it, there I am, twelve and sassy mouthed, standing next to Grannycakes who sings louder than anyone else in that cavernous chapel with the peeling light blue paint and the plain wooden cross that has a simple purple scarf draped round its arms as it stands so tall and quiet and loud up on there on the back wall.

The piano now is a shiny black baby grand, but the one back then was old. Towering and brown in all its Southern Baptistness, a little out of tune and twangy as its hymns bounced off the unfinished wood floors that were half covered in indoor/outdoor carpet, blue to match the walls.

The light switches were those push-button kind, rectangular panels of little circles that I loved to push –mash as my grandparents would say- and listen to the clunk and see what hanging light would go off with my mashing.

I stand amazed.

But really, not so much.

Not when I’m twelve and I think my grandma sings horribly and I pretty much hate being there but I love her enough to go when she asks the night before with a twinkle in her eye.

My granddad speaks that morning, -little churches can never keep a preacher it seems- and he cries and it’s the first time I’ve ever heard that and doesn’t it just tear up the heart of a female to hear a grown man cry?

And then that big cross.

Not much else to look at as the piano plunks and the ten or so people try to follow along but all their ears can hear is the short little lady from the South in the second row singing her out-of-tune heart all-out to Jesus with every four feet and eleven inches of her while her chubby and pimply granddaughter stands awkwardly by and attempts to not look like she’s singing while she’s singing enough to not look sullen.

It’s hard to look cool when you don’t feel cool.

It’s hard to blend in when you’re standing next to someone whose voice is filling the whole sky.

So when the preacher sings I Stand Amazed and it’s five-thousand miles and thirty years later and you don’t worry so much about looking cool anymore and neither do the kids next to you because they’re cooler than you ever were and don’t care if they’re not, I’m carried to the robin’s egg blue and that simple wooden cross and I can almost hear her through the tears that surprise me because really, it is pretty marvelous, isn’t it?

Pretty marvelous that the pimply little girl who didn’t know what it all meant but thought she knew it all, well, she eventually learned, and now she knows she doesn’t know it all, but she doesn’t pretend to anymore either.

Pretty marvelous that in her not knowing, she came to know what she needed to know to teach her children what they’ll need to know.

Pretty marvelous that as they’re all learning what they know…and following what they know…and teaching what they know…they can be with others who are doing the same.

Those ones who sing loud and proud like Grannycakes.

Those ones who are shy and awkward and still searching.

Those ones who stand tall with every inch of themselves and try to sing it true even if it is a little off-key.

Those ones who are like children still and are pimply in their faith.

Those ones who have bodies that ail and won’t be with us for too many more years.

Those ones who grieve and mourn and can only manage tears around their choked out words.

Those ones who forget things now, names and places and people, but they always remember why they’re singing.

Those ones who sing all-out to the One who gave out His all…

…and isn’t it marvelous?

I’d give every penny I have to hear her sing again.

But some days…

…if I listen hard enough…

…and if the song is just Baptisty enough…

…and if my heart is just soft enough…

I can almost hear her.

And in almost hearing, I can see that paint and those lights and the tall walnut pews and the quietly loud cross and all those the people who aren’t cool but who cry…

…and even though it wasn’t perfect and even though there was pain and even though it was a long and bumpy road to find what I now know…

…I’m standing in the presence and it reminds me that one marvelous day, her and I, and all of us here who know just how marvelous it is, well, we’ll all stand there.

We’ll be amazed.

And we’ll sing.

I Stand Amazed
Chris Tomlin

Book Review: Annie Spruce, The Dog That Didn’t Die by Cassandra Rankin

Teen Song

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All in one day it happened that my little boy…

my baby boy

…he was rolling hay bales on out of the truck and climbing around on the load heaving and moving the fifty pound blocks and his pushing and pulling was actually helping not just adding cuteness to the work and that helping made the job go smooth and it got the bales to his big brother who got them to his dad who, because of all this help…

…stacked a whole load quickly.

And my girls…oh my beautiful girls who show me daily glimpses of the women they’ll become…those to-be leaders and wives and mothers, grandmothers and aunties and friends who walk beside…they were just happy little babies with the chubbiest thighs and the cutest cries and an uncanny way of waking their mama up at 4 a.m. bright and shiny for the day. But somehow this day, they clip up their hair and don aprons and dream up the perfect lamb chops and brownie fudge ganache for their big brother who befriends and protects and teases.

I thought the turning from twelve to thirteen was just yesterday for me, the time of staring into a mirror wondering who that person in there was. I thought that little girl was still there somewhere, but today, when I look around this house…this home with paint peeling and dishes stacked and floors needing scrubbed and all those handprints peppered on all the walls painted with all those coats and all those years of stubborn and determined love…that girl inside reminds me that growing up happens quietly.

Quickly and suddenly and silently and gradually.

And beautifully.

So when we’re back home and the big celebration is over and now, today, it’s officially THE DAY, I remember back to the day when he was first born and there in the big white room filled with doctors in blue hats and masks that revealed smiling eyes beaming at me, a sound hit my ears and it bounced off those walls and it was so foreign and so new that my exhausted mind couldn’t make sense of it and I asked my husband to tell me what it was.

That’s your son, honey.

That’s our boy.

Today he’s thirteen and my once-newborn is entering the last third of his trek to adulthood. He makes me proud. He perplexes me. He amazes me.

And before bed I ask him if he’d once more play the pretty song he’s been learning on the piano so his dad can hear it.

Reluctantly, like a teenager and with sighs, he sits down to play for his mama.

His birthday gift to her.

He plinks it out steadily, note by note, measure by measure.

And his song fills our home.

If—

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

~

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

~

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

~

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Gone Goldie

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We’ve had a chicken go missing.

I should say, we’ve likely had a chicken get killed.

In our fourth year of our little farm, this is our first loss to predation.

We love our chickens. Actually, we pretty much adore our chickens.

My husband told me from the time he met me that he would never in his life, ever.e.v.e.r.EHHH-VURRR have chickens.

Never.

Until his eldest, his little buddy, his My-Dad-Is-My-Hero firstborn thought maybe he might like to try raising chickens for 4-H.

So what’s a dad to do?

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Get busy putting together a chicken coop of course.

And two years later, here we are, bushels of poultry experience under our belts and pecks of chicken manure in our boots. We’re tried and true farm fresh egg snobs to the death, and have been converted into constant watchers and worriers over a bunch of feathered personalities that dwell on our little ranch.

Our little laying flock of thirteen hens.

Well, twelve now.

Because Goldie’s gone.

And we don’t know what happened to her.

Goldie came to us one sunny late spring day just a couple weeks after the Orloff got squished, and hours after the rooster got killed. (His killing was not of the predatorial kind of death but rather what we here in Alaska call a Defense of Life and Property killing. Another blog post..and maybe too sensitive for the squeamish of heart. All you really need to know is that the Russian got flat, Lolly got dead, and my little guy was pretty tore up about the whole ordeal.)

So.

In swoops my hero neighbor bff with a sweet little chick for my sweet little guy and he’s not quite ready to hold it on his own but he tries hard and pretty soon he’s sitting on a stump snuggling his sweet new baby hen and he names her Goldie because her feathers are gold like the sun Mom.

And that little hen was the best layer in our bunch. How excited we were when she laid her first egg.

It took her a while to fit in with the older hens, but soon enough, Goldie was pecking right along with them like an old bird and acting like she had just as much right as any of them there old biddies to be here.

When my son did the twice-daily counts, he’d roll on down the list…Sweetie and Big Chicken, April and Gertrude, The Wyandotts, two Russians…

…and Goldie.

But she wasn’t at the head count on Monday and we still don’t know where she went.

The kids scouted and found some tracks and some wingbeats in the snow. That’s all we know of her fate. There was some kind of chase.

The wingbeats look to be hers, but who knows? Owls are a major predator of chicken. So are hawks.

Was she taken by a large bird?

Did a coyote get brave and ignore the smells of our dogs and come up to the barnyard and snatch her? Or did a fox, rare in our parts, sneak in for an easy breakfast?

We’ve pretty much ruled out neighborhood dogs, mostly because dogs tend to be messy and bumbly and would’ve made more mess and more noise.

Unless it was OUR dog. My fear is that my Annie decided to play chase with Goldie and rather than leave a bloody mess like dogs will do, she just injured her, forcing Goldie out into the woods, hurt and alone and cold.

My whole family is sure if that was the case, there would be a mess.

So what happened?

On the way to town the day she went missing, my son and I puzzled over it for thirty minutes straight. What could’ve happened? Why is there no kill site? No blood anywhere?

Where is our Goldie?

It was a horrible feeling and I know she’s just a chicken, but the mama in me and the caretaker in me and the farmer in me thinks of her out there in the cold -far below zero at night now- and I can hardly stand it.

So when I puzzle over it that night and give my husband the run down and fret over Goldie and then wonder out loud if this is what Jesus was talking about when the shepherd left the flock to go find that one lost sheep that had wandered away and state that maybe THIS is EXACTLY how Jesus feels when WE drift away from Him and the flock…my husband just looks at me and cocks his head a little bit and I can tell he’s trying to be sensitive and not break out laughing.

“Wow. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of us being compared to a chicken.”

“Well. You know. Not really. But..kinda. She’s LOST.”

“All this talk about Jesus finding a lost chicken…honey you must’ve really liked that little chicken.”

Yeah.

Comparing our lost chicken to the lost sheep in the Bible might be a stretch.

It might be a little dramatic.

It might be a little womanly and hand-wringing and not-so-farmer-tough and making a big deal out of a small one.

But he’s right.

I kinda liked that little chicken.

Morning by Morning…

Especially Him…

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Kate’s given me permission to share this piece with you. It made my heart beat fast. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Do explore her blog when you can…she weaves words into tapestries that’ll have you holding your breath.

Be Stronger

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Ohhmygosh…. Where to begin? Can I breathlessly sigh…maybe sit down here a while? I’ve missed here. This blog…this little corner.

Truthfully, I’ve just missed writing in general. It’s been too long. The book…the holidays…

Ten days into the new year and it still feels like Christmas. But it feels like March too. The days are long but the years are short. A wise mama other than me said that once when my babies were babies and it was YESS then but it’s yes now too.

My goal, our family’s goal, in 2015 we decided, is simply To Be Stronger. Of course, there’s a secret Type A side of me that I keep hidden well and she likes to think on things a bit and then “expand”.

So our To Be Stronger aim became one of those bubble-and-line think sheets we all learned how to do in English back in 5th grade, and pretty soon our Be Stronger found itself smack in the middle of the page with branches of Emotional, Financial, Spiritual, Marital and Physical bubbles sprawled across the coffee-stained white in bold print with little baby bubbles of how-to dangling off of them.

And before my little boy handsome even knew about all these goals and bubbles his mama’d been working on, he stood up to pray in his kids’ church class. Which was a huge Be Stronger feat in itself because he hasn’t been to kids’ church class since last March when he abruptly decided with tears in his eyes that he wanted to hang with Mom and Dad and go to adult class or help them teach the little kids. Stuck like glue to his folks he is.

But we’ve been taking him and sitting with him since he was missing his kids’ class but just didn’t have enough strength to go by himself.

And at the end of class that day at the end of the year, he summoned every ounce of his little brown-haired boy courage and stood up at the closing when the teacher asked if anyone wanted to pray. He folded his chubby little man-hands and he squinted his eyes tight and he thanked the Lord for the day like his daddy always does…

…and he asked God if He would help us all to grow strong.

And my Mama heart bust open. He didn’t even know we’d been talking about that.

But isn’t that what we all need? To grow stronger?

Even when we don’t know we need it, we need it.

And in 2014, our strength walked us through…

-helping our girl learn to walk her first year as a brand-new Christian
-two surgeries
-one cancer diagnosis
-one death in our family back home
-one rooster execution
-two goat rehomings
-four guinea pig deaths
-seven weeks of radiation treatment
-a barnyard reconfiguration
-raising, butchering and processessing a flock of 30 meat chickens
-another long weekend at the annual fair
-publishing a book
-a twenty-year marriage anniversary

A little less stressful than some years, a little more than others. Just a year.

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength but sometimes you’re just walking your normal life and you don’t even realize your strength has waned some but there it is, the load that once felt stable now feels heavier and your muscles start to quiver some and all of a sudden…you just feel a little worn out.

So you slow down to rest a bit more. And rethink. Refresh. Refill. Rejuvenate. Reenergize. Regenerate.

To grow stronger.

Even a six-year old can see it.

Sometimes you need to slow the pace so you can take some deep breaths in…and let some deep breaths out.

So ten days into this year…

…we sleep a little longer and don’t feel guilty.

…we pile up on the big bed most every night for devotionals and long family bedtime prayers.

…we cut back on all outside obligations, reorganized others to fit better, and only allow the calendar to hold things that are a) easy b) refreshing or c) bring great strength to us or those who need us.

…we read the Bible every day.

…we exercise for six minutes at the top of the hour on school days to refresh and strengthen.

…we cook fun new things out of a new cook book.

…we talk a bit more.

…we smile a bit more.

And hopefully, after all the days and all the weeks, we’ll get to the end of 2015 and we’ll be able to squint our eyes and clasp our hands and thank the LORD for the day…

…and celebrate being stronger.

I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
~Philippians 4:13

About Cassandra

Not only is it spring break…not only are our days getting longer, (YAY sun!) but our little Facebook page just broke the 100-likes mark! Woo hoo!

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