“I’m tired, boss…”

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John Coffey said it in The Green Mile, and I reckon we all feel a bit that way these days.

John was a mountain of a man, and he had a gift of healing people. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, when in reality, he was only trying to heal the little girl he’d found injured.

Years back, The Green Mile was one of my favorite books, and unlike a lot of Stephen King’s work, which tends to dull from his literary brilliance once the stories are set to film, when The Green Mile was made into a movie, it was made into a good movie.

Michael Clarke Duncan brilliantly embodied the character Coffey, and even with the outstanding lineup of actors in that film, it could be argued it was Duncan who made the movie.

His largeness made him intimidating, but his softness made him vulnerable.

John Coffey was plopped into a world full of injustice and ugliness and was forced to function to the best his abilities allowed.

Stared at. Talked about. Judged. Misunderstood.

“I’m tired, boss. Tired of being on the road, lonely as a sparrow in the rain. Tired of never having me a buddy to be with, or tell me where we’s coming from or going to, or why. Mostly, I’m tired of people being ugly to each other. I’m tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world every day. There’s too much of it. It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time.”

I’m tired, LORD.

I’m tired of the hypocrisy.

I’m tired of the ugliness.

I’m tired of the name-calling and angry words and the endless insults and people being mean and divisive and hateful and forgetting that we’re all here together for just a very short time.

It’s like pieces of glass in my head all the time.

It takes one stroll through a comment thread on social media before I daily lose faith in my fellow mankind.

And it takes one stroll through my memories to think of how my Southern grandparents rarely spoke of politics but would joke on voting day that they had just gone to cancel one another’s vote out.

They were married over fifty years, and while I saw many heated arguments between them during my childhood, never once was it about politics. On the day my grandmother died, my grandfather instantly became ready to leave this earth and pass into eternity so he wouldn’t have to be without her. It was sixteen long years before that happened, and every day of those sixteen years he’d tell the LORD how he was ready to go be with her.

They were both raised in the poor South.

His childhood home was the back half of a house set on a cotton plantation and his Daddy and Mama worked their hands to the bone. He left when he lied about his age to go serve his country, and then he went AWOL when his country lied to him about the leave he was promised, and do you know he met my little granny on that leave; a chance meeting that wouldn’t have happened had that bus pulled out on time, just thirty seconds earlier?

If they raised their family any way politically, it could be said they raised us Democrat.

She had been raised just two states over —their accents never left them and even after thirty years of raising their family in the Midwest, I can still hear their yonder and piller and Jaysus and loveyanow, and she loved her mama with all her heart but left for nursing school like her big sister had done, and she wanted to make her mama proud too. She left school when she met that young man on the bus after she’d been home for break, and while her sister graduated and went on to be a nurse, my Grannycakes never did. She cared for children instead, and she taught them about Jesus.

The two of them sang so off-key, my grandparents.

My Grandad joked once coming back from voting across the street at the school…he whispered to me as he came in the door not to tell Granny, but he’d just voted Republican, and he laughed and laughed. That was the most I’d ever heard him speak of politics.

They were the loudest singers in the church, and when they sang together in the kitchen while making hotcakes, we’d take pictures because even then we knew something special was happening in the ordinary.

Their Bibles are two of the very few family heirlooms we own.

They were not without fault.

Deep faults.

It is easy to romanticize a life after that life has left us.

They left us with trauma too.

But that trauma wasn’t over politics.

It was over things that shouldn’t have happened; so many of the same things that happened to the same types of people during that time; things that left life-long wounds.

But they both loved Jesus.

And they tried their best to show us Him and how to love those He gave us, whether it be spouse or children or grandchildren or neighbors.

How to forgive.

How to give grace and how to receive grace.

The two of them lived through the presidencies of Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and my Grannycakes died during Bill Clinton’s tenure. My Grandad saw both terms of George W. Bush and died less than one year into Barack Obama’s term.

Thirteen presidents throughout my granny’s life; fifteen for my grandfather.

They were married long enough to see eleven presidents serve our country.

They both loved JFK. My Grannycakes always cried when she spoke of him.

I’m glad they’re not here today, my grandparents.

I would give every penny I have to call my Grannycakes. Sometimes when I’m driving to town and I just want to talk, I swear I’d give a limb right then and there just to dial that phone number that is forever etched on my heart just so I could hear her delightful squeal at hearing from her only granddaughter, and we’d talk and talk while I drive, and she’d tell me all the small town gossip and how she bought my favorite cereal up at the store today, the kind she always buys special when she knows I’m coming over for the weekend, and I’ll tell her about my babies and how much they’ve grown and how well they’re doing in their jobs and how all their animals are growing strong, and she’ll ooh and ahh over all the baby lambs’ names and tell me how proud she is of my farm girl shepherdess and her hard work and pragmatic mind, and my she’ll brag on my tradesman who would be her superstar because he’s in a foreign land she’s never seen at the tippy top of the world, and she’d go on and on about her eldest great-granddaughter the jetsetter living in the big city working for a high class bakery, and her baby will be the apple of her eye because he’s the baby and such a smarty pants sweetheart, and she’ll want to know every last detail like only grandmas do, and when it’s time to hang up, it’ll take a few minutes and she’ll tell me love ya now at least four times before we finally disconnect, and some days, that’s all I really want is to dial her up, and I can literally hear her voice as though I did call, and really, I’d give anything to do it.

But I’m glad she’s not here.

The world today would break her heart.

She loved people and she wouldn’t know how to be in a world where people don’t love people because of how they voted.

It would tear her up to know that people unfriended her granddaughter because they didn’t agree with her values and opinions.

It would break her to know that members of her own family don’t speak because one felt that everyone should take an experimental vaccine our government pushed, and that those family members had cut from their lives those who felt differently.

It would absolutely crush her to hear that people within the church, sisters in the Body of Christ, removed me from their lives because I expressed disagreement with the progressive Democratic party and its harmful agenda over the past fifteen years.

I pulled away from all we were raised with when I saw what was happening to our world back when things started to shift and the party of my grandparents was no longer the party I knew.

She would support me in that.

But the divisiveness politics has become would kill her to see.

So these days, I have this house and heart full of people we’ve raised to pay attention…to think about what is happening around them…to know how our country was established…to know the history and the heartbreak of all the evils that have been done in the name of power and religion…to know what it means to be a citizen of America…and they have seen their debt increasing, for them and their future children…they have seen their world change at a pace they’ve given up on trying to keep up with, and they have been asked to bend and flex and morph all they know into something this world wants to be the new way of thinking.

We’ve raised them to love the LORD, to love people, and to love their country, and we’ve raised them to think critically, but sometimes, in today’s climate, I wonder if they even care anymore.

Sometimes I think this world has broken our young adults and desensitized them in a way that they may just forget the foundation on which they stand.

We forced them apart for two whole years, asking them not to hug, touch, or socialize in person; we ask them to recognize seventy-two different genders, exhibit acceptance, inclusivity, and an embrace for all, all while we model hatred and insults on social media, exhibiting deep disrespect and schoolyard bullying to anyone subscribing to a different set of opinions as ours; we ask them to pay for the firehose faucet spending of our government, even as we teach them the United States of America belongs to WE THE PEOPLE, which affirms “that the government of the United States exists to serve its citizens.” https://www.senate.gov/about/origins-foundations/senate-and-constitution/constitution.htm

Why would they care?

What should they care about?

Which issue?

Which one of the many social activism issues or government corruption issues or cultural issues or economy issues should they focus on?

They’ve got to be tired too.

And then during one of the many deep discussions we’ve had round here these past months about current events, my daughter, that middle child who avoids social media like the plague but somehow always knows what’s going on in the world and isn’t ever one to mince words even while not caring much about what other folks do, she hears about the Hitler/Trump posts that are circulating, and she says NO. You don’t get to do that. Comparing what is happening right now, right here in America…to compare Trump to Hitler and what Hitler did in the Holocaust, sorry, but no. They don’t get to do that. That is a horror all on its own and to even compare the discomfort of what we may be feeling in America today, what is happening right now, to compare that to what happened to them is insulting to them. No, you don’t get to do that.

She surprises me with the strength and conviction of her words; she stands on what she believes, but she is okay to let other people stand on what they believe in too.

Not on this issue, though.

Then on the random, my youngest baby chooses Schindler’s List for Saturday night movie, and I realize that even though I’d loosened my grip by the time he came along and let him read the Harry Potter books at a younger age than my older ones, and watch many movies at an earlier age than I had the other three…while somehow I’ve seen Schindler’s many times and read the book, my baby had never seen it.

I watched it anew through the eyes of my young man, and tears streamed down my face as I took in the horrors yet again, imagining the absolute fright, the trains, the gunshots, the starvation, the separation of families…my soul churns. I’ve read so many first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors; I’ve “met” them by way of their stories on news and social media.

How can we compare any time like that time?

How can we compare this time right now to that time?

While my boy usually flits around on his phone or works on his laptop during movie time, Schindler’s List held his attention, even as a black-and-white film would normally be found archaic and boring. He is enough of a history buff to know that this story is important.

The absolute horror of it all.

Nazi Germany committed mass murder on an unprecedented scale. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators killed six million Jewish people. The Nazis and their allies and collaborators also committed other mass atrocities. They persecuted and killed millions of non-Jewish people during World War II. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/en

This time when I own a beautiful home on a little chunk of land that is all mine, with cars in the driveway that have my name on the title, and I drive them to a grocery store where I purchase anything I want with money my family and I have earned, or to an office building where I do my work uninhibited and joyfully, or to a church building in the middle of town where I gather with other people from all different walks of life, but all of us enjoying the same freedoms, and we raise our voices to the LORD God in Heaven with no fear whatsoever of government telling us we can’t?

How can we even compare?

My grandparents tolerated presidents and local politicians and Congress and the House for so many different terms and different parties, and they raised their family, and they worked their jobs, and they paid their taxes, and they owned their home, and they loved their neighbors and their friends and the LORD.


They saw many political changes of the guard, and they understood that was part of life, but that life wasn’t politics.

When did that change?

When did riots become the way of disagreeing?

When did burning and looting become the way we expressed ourselves?

Would they think our current state of affairs was any different than the state of affairs in the 90’s?

“The era of big government is over.” -Bill Clinton, 1996 State of the Union Address

The Clinton-Gore Administration has made the federal government smaller by nearly a quarter of a million jobs. This is the largest, swiftest government-wide cut in the history of the United States. It’s not just a post-Cold War defense reduction; every department except Justice has become smaller…The federal government workforce is now the smallest it has been in more than 30 years, going all the way back to the Kennedy Administration…The cuts were long overdue. People had long since grown tired of new government programs initiated each year, with none ever ending. They were tired of stories about senseless sounding government jobs, like the Official Tea-Taster, tired of larger and larger bureaucracies in Washington interfering more and more with their lives. For years, presidential candidates have been promising to make government smaller. But until Bill Clinton, none delivered…The workforce cuts are saving lots of money…Cutting a quarter million jobs, therefore, can save well over $10 billion annually. But that’s not the half of it. The savings from all the commonsense reforms we have put in place total $118 billion…Put that together with the benefits of our healthy economy, and you’ll see that the Clinton-Gore Administration has come up with another one for the record books: four straight years of deficit cuts, for a stupendous total reduction of $476 billion. 
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/nprrpt/annrpt/vp-rpt96/intro.html

How is this right now any different than that?

How is right now any different than the past four years of one-half of our population being angry and unsatisfied with our government and the Biden administration?

We could talk on and on about the hypocrisy we see playing out before our eyes and the double standards and the fact that when the right was dissatisfied, they let it be known by boycotts and using their voice rather than burning and looting and destruction and hurting people.

But I’m tired of talking about it.

I’m tired.

We The People have become We The Divided, and Jesus said Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand, (Matthew 12:25) and Abraham Lincoln echoed this in his “House Divided” speech when he said, a house divided will not stand.

When did we become not united?

When did we quit respecting one another, or the position of the president, or our civilized society…

and turn into a house divided against itself?

I’m tired, boss.

I’m tired, LORD.

I don’t know the answers.

But I know we are not living in Nazi Germany.

I know that we are still the greatest, freest, most liberal, and citizen-empowered nation on our planet.

And I know that my grandparents lived their life together politically opposite and they raised a family and they served their community and they worked hard all their days and they loved Jesus.

So that’s what I’ll do too.

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

~

“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” -Rumi

Dear Alaska: It’s Not Me, It’s You

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How do you break up with someone that you love dearly, but you know no longer loves you?

It is hard, after near on three decades of life together to come to the conclusion that you are no longer loved. What once was a beautiful relationship, so full of light and promise has slowly, over the years degraded into a cruel, abusive, one-sided love.

Alaska no longer loves me, and I’m afraid I am going to have to break up with her.

This place, this great land that once held me so very captivated, so enthralled at every turn, she has turned her back on me, and while she was once so very good to me, she now assaults me daily with her cold barbs, dry and arid humor, and her sharp and crusty edginess.

Now SHE may say I’m just being a whiny baby.

SHE may say I’m a wimp.

But here’s the thing: I’ve put in time and heart and soul loving her.

I’ve given her a fair shake and the best of me; over half of a lifetime I’ve been hopelessly devoted to her, in fact.

When we moved here in 1997, everything about this place was dreamy. Even the winters. Mountainscapes at every corner, trees for miles and miles, vast swaths of ocean and quietness…I never wanted to leave Alaska. I knew I had found home. My husband and I had chosen the right place, I just knew it.

Once our children started to come along, we became even more sure that we were right. Our roots sunk deep into the ground of Alaska that grows only weeds and houses oil, but the soil of our faith and the family we’d created was rich.

And now, some twenty years later, to find that this place that once held me so sure and solidly has turned her back on me…it’s a betrayal.

I have defended you, Alaska!

I have taken up for you, and bragged on you, and told of all your virtues and beauties, and I’ve invited people I love to come rest in the bosom of your greatness.

I scoffed at people we knew who’d leave you during the cold months, thinking of them as not TRUE Alaskans, but old and soft, lukewarm northerners in their need to eschew your harsh, dark winters, all while thinking of ourselves as rugged and devout, willing to sustain the long months of short days and deep snow and temperatures dipping below zero for weeks at a time.

The trade-off I told myself, for roughing it, was the reward of the sudden blast of summer, endless sunshine, temperate days that ended around a campfire dinner at who knows what time. Was it 6 pm or nearly eleven? The onslaught of midnight sun bringing bursts of energy lasting twelve beautiful weeks, after which we’d once again see the stars we’d so missed as darkness began to slowly return to us; a sky full of lights burning on a vast and endless tapestry of space and we’d watch in amazement as though it was the first time we’d seen those familiar constellations and aurora borealis that make the skies dance at every turn.

I have loved you, Alaska, with every fiber of my heart and my body and my soul.

I have raised a family here, and animals here, and purchased plots of your land so that our family may always have a home here, a tiny chunk of your majesty to carry into generations ahead.

And now…now that middle age is firmly upon me, now that my family is almost raised, now that my children belong to you and love you with ever fiber of them, making your landscapes their huge hometown of a state that has spoiled them for any other place on earth, you turn your back on me and have made your once-perfect climate now uninhabitable for this body that carries me around.

You have gotten cold.’

You have gotten cruel.

You have gotten mean and hard and hurtful to my very bones.

Alaska, you have made me want to break up with you.

Now you might say, as only a scorned lover will, that it’s MY fault.

That I was the one who stepped out on you, not the other way around.

That I am the mean-spirited one who pursued other lands and slowly came to love that other one more than I love you.

I will admit, though not with shame, that yes, I indeed did seek out the warmth of climates more temperate.

That I did join those ranks of people I was once cynical of as I began to leave your bosom during the coldest parts of your winters.

Yes, I do admit that.

But you see, Alaska, it was YOU who drove me out.

It was YOU who continued with your relentless, driving force of your climate that wears a body down, year after year, winter after winter, until one day, after all the kids are grown and a decade and a half of farming has passed, that a young woman wakes up to find herself round about the fiftieth year and discover she is freezing.

She discovers she is sick and tired of walking in the crunching ice and deep snow all while having to wear closed-toed shoes that make her feet feel constrained and straightjacketed outside of their preferred footwear of flipflops.

She realizes that she will never, ever, not in a million years obtain enough Vitamin D from you to reach the bottom of the recommended range, let alone an acceptable midrange amount to keep her body functioning and happy. Not even when she supplements heavily.

She wakes up one day just plumb exhausted with the cold and the dark, and the knowing that there are still months of it ahead.

It was you, Alaska.

It was you who made me love the journeys I’ve been able to take to my other land, that place that welcomes me with tradewinds and warm sand and blue-green water that feels like a bath even on the cold days.

It was you who woke me up to the realization that the other place leaves me rejuvenated and fresh and feeling young again, almost like I could once and for all throw the thyroid medications in the trash and overcome the metabolism slump that has taken over my mid-life years.

It was you who made me realize how dry my skin and nails and hair all are when I winter in your climate, and how vibrant and healthy they are when I am in that other place.

It was you, Alaska, and now, now that I have realized all of this, I am stuck figuring out how I can break up with someone I have loved for as long as I have loved you.

How do I divorce and split custody of myself between you and my warm, tropical mistress?

How do I forget thirty years of never wanting another place and come to love a place outside of you as fiercely as I’ve loved you?

How do I leave you behind?

Can I maybe have you both?

Would you agree to sharing my heart? Would you be alright if I thought of her when I closed my eyes? Would it wound your bigness if I spoke of her once in awhile, and shared some of the aloha and sunshine she has given me, sprinkling it amongst your people here?

Would it be okay if the people I’ve met there become just as dear to me as the people you’ve given me here?

Those flipflop-wearing peaceful ones like our Jeep friend who hugs us and calls us Bro and picks us up and shuttles us around and treats us so much like Ohana that I send leftover groceries home for him and the kids and wife I’ve never met, but who are all like family?

Or those we’ve come to worship with, that group that meets in an open barn, birds flitting in and out with the music, praise raising the roof while the tradewinds blow in the scent of plumeria?

And would it please you to hear that we speak of you often, Alaska? That as we come across folks who share of their home states, your name will eventually come up, and even then, even as we soak up the sun and the heat that you don’t provide us, we speak of our love for you, of your majesty and your mountains and your wide open wildness that is so much like that warmer place.

See, Alaska, it isn’t that I hate you.

I’m quite fond of you still, really.

I brag on you wherever I go.

I quietly delight with pride how people react when we mention our ties to you. How they look at us a little bit differently because we know you.

A bit like a relative of a celebrity, we raise a bit higher in status just because we bear your name.

And once, that was enough to make me so proud to be yours.

But that was long ago before my bones got cold and before menopause took over my life and before my hair started to thin.

I don’t want to leave you, Alaska.

I just want you to be a little bit more like that other land.

I want you to let me wear flipflops every day.

I want you to be kind, and gentle, and breezy and not so cold-hearted and mean.

I want you to be more like her.

I know I am asking a lot of you, dear Great Land.

And I know your quiet, patient mountains sit and wait for me to take in their glory like I used to before your long, dark winters wore me down.

I know your history and I love and have so much deep respect for your eons of stoic, strong presence, holding up this end of the nation with such reverence and regard to all of those who came before us.

I really do love you, Alaska.

I just have to figure out how this can work, me loving both of you, because see, I am an all-in kind of gal, and I don’t like to split my heart in two.

I want to love you with my whole heart like I once did so many years ago.

I don’t want to think of any other place that I might love just as much, or surprisingly, even more than you.

So I have come to the realization that you and I need to break up, or at least take some time apart.

I have decided that if I can’t love you as I once did, I am left only to love your people.

Much like our Jeep friend, much like our tropical church family, and much like all of those we meet who, like us are just chasing down some extra Vitamin D to get through the winter, I have people here I cherish too.

Those people who started as friends and quickly became family.

Those folks who anchor us, who tie us here on those days where we might just be inclined to fly away and let the tradewinds blow us toward the winter sunshine.

Those brothers and sisters and neighbors and friends and children…those who have all become so much part of our hearts that to leave them would be like ripping those hearts out of our cold and shivering bodies.

I have to think of them now, Alaska, and not so much you.

For the sake of our relationship, that is what I have to do.

And for them, I’ll stay with you.

I will check back in with you after we’ve had a little mental space.

Around about May, Alaska, I promise that I will look up from my work; I will glance out the window, I will turn my head once again toward your mountains and your seas, and maybe, just maybe…

I will decide that we should stay together after all.

~

In the Caribou Tundra,
in the wild barren land,
on the fierce arctic ice,
where the polar bear stands,
where the trail of the Eskimo Hunter is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

Where the Northern Lights blaze
above a cold arctic haze
and caribou come to an old shaman’s drum.

In saloons and in dance halls
they talked of the gold,
there were stories of fortune
and stories of cold.

The trail of the weary gold miner is worn,
this is the country where legends are born.

-Jim Varsos, Alaska’s Balladeer, Hobo Jim, This is the Country Where Legends are Born

An Extra Year with Woodrow

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We lay in the quiet, cranky with one another after a long day in a long summer during a long season…and I know he is saying it to be kind and to let me know he’s on my side when he tells me low, I had Mike dig Woodrow’s grave while he had the backhoe here.

As happens every autumn in Alaska, some winter-prep chores fall to the bottom of the long list and in the frenzy to button up, uncompleted ones get forgotten once snow comes.

Move it to the spring list, we’ll get it at Breakup.

Except this one was important. When I’d asked him last fall to take our boys out before snowfall and dig a spot for my big white dog to rest –right there in front of that little copse of trees at the edge of the barnyard; he’s watched over it all these years, that’s where I want him…

I was mad when it didn’t make it to the completed chores before the ground froze up.

He assured me it would be okay. This just means he’s going to see it through another winter, babe.

And then around February -five months into our old boy’s 4-6 month prognosis- I noticed a bit of a slow-down, a slight decline.

I turned my dread to anger and aimed it toward my husband, sure my dog was going to die and that we were in the beginning of his last days.

It will be okay. I’ve already decided what we’ll do if we have to put him down. I’ll have him cremated for you.

I fumed.

YOU don’t get to make that decision. He’s MY dog. I asked you to do it last fall and you didn’t…it’s not your decision to make.

And Woodrow and I went out on the porch and I had a cigar and cried while I stroked his big white head that he loves to rest along my hip.

He’s not really just MY dog. He is so loved by so many. And he loves so many, too. But me and him, we’re like peas and carrots and I’m not a furbaby kind of dog owner, but the kids tease anyway and say Woodrow is Mom’s favorite child.

I decided that day that my husband would purchase a freezer large enough for our dog and we would lay him to rest in the spring. That may sound morbid, twisted even; but understand, we live in a place where burial is not an option for half of each year. Folks on farms do what we have to do. And while I wholeheartedly embrace cremation for animals (and people!), I have decided it’s not what I want for Woodrow.

Any other dog and I would be fine with cremation. Any other dog I would be at peace laying them to rest next to Annie and Daisy, our Char and sweet Beau…but somehow Woodrow is different and I want him close to the land he has so loved every day since he learned it was his. His disorientation to his new geography and his thousands of years of instinct took him on a ten-mile perimeter check his first week on our farm before I learned how to teach him that he is only responsible for us.

Right here.

And in the five years since, he’s never once left again.

So in my heart, he deserves to lie next to the barnyard.

He has earned his rest under the trees.

But then his sweet angel doctor from the north of us taught me how to make adjustments to his medications -those wonder drugs that keep his big actual heart pumping in rhythm with the big guardian heart he has for his people and his farm, and he perked back up and started jumping up on the porch again.

It’s been one extra year we’ve had with Woodrow now.

One year since the day I drove back to fetch him after x-rays, my tears streaming as I processed the news that the best thing I could do for him that day would be to have him euthanized.

One year since I my heart fell into my gut, knowing I’d never again have another dog that would ever come close to holding my heart like this one does.

I’ve loved some good dogs that were best friends to me. Some damn good dogs.

This dog is different and it feels more like the relationship us animal folks have with horses -that keen sense of not having to talk but learning to trust one another; that understanding that comes from just the slightest shift of movement, or just a look into one another’s eyes, a sound or a sigh…a telepathy almost and he looks to me for it, and he is smart like I’ve never known a dog to be, and I never knew the high value of a livestock guardian dog until him; nor did I know their intelligence or intuition. Their sweetness in spite of their always being a little guarded. And their deep and undying loyalty. People with dogs feel what I’m saying. People with livestock guardian dogs they’re bonded to KNOW what I’m saying.

I brought him home and I did what I do, I researched and I sought answers and I fielded the advice and I prayed.

And it’s been eleven months since his angel doctor with the high tech equipment was able to narrow down his exact problem and rein it in with a medication regime he remains on to this day.

My friend furiously canned up Woodrow meals, we found our routine with his feed and his meds, and we all know now the red pill is only at bedtime and the rest are twice a day.

Matthew shops the sales for meat, and he gets mad at me when I feed Woodrow a pork roast with the brown rice when I didn’t know my husband was looking forward to pork chops.

He turns his nose up at the blueberries or carrots I add, but happily scarfs up his dish when I add a little chicken broth.

He’d dropped so much weight when he was first sick, my kids now call him chubby since he’s hit 130 pounds. I don’t feel it in his ribs or his belly, but I’m watching him because that’s what I do.

And don’t you know, I got a notice from his big-city vet’s office this week that it’s time for his one-year check-in. They’ve been angels, truly, calling in his prescriptions monthly, working with our local vet for the occasional bloodwork to make sure his medications aren’t tearing up his kidneys…but now it’s time to go see them again. Actually go see them.

I sat in their office nearly a year ago and we cried together and we worked our plan, and both the vet and I knew that we’d probably never see one another face to face again. Why would we? He had four to six months to live, and we’ve got our vets down here on this side of the mountains.

But now it’s time to go see them again.

I don’t know why I’ve been given an extra year with Woodrow, but it isn’t lost on me what a blessing it is.

We’ve had good friends lose good dogs this past year. We’ve lost one of our own. We have friends right now, the people kind and the furry kind, that are in the thick of the fight, daily medications, comfort plans, trips to the CBD store to knock back some of the pain in cancer-riddled canine bones, trips out from the vet to euthanize peacefully on cozy and worn dog-beds…

They get old. They get sick. We have to say goodbye to them so soon. Too soon.

Every single time, it’s never enough time.

None of us really said it out loud, but we knew that this summer will most likely be Woodrow’s last.

So when a top-notch puppy from a top-notch breeder popped up coincidentally, the farmers in our farm family had a conversation.

I didn’t want another dog. I wanted to let Woodrow take part of my heart with him and then maybe someday…long into the future, I might be ready for a little wee baby dog to sit on my dash and curl up behind my knees at night.

But my daughter has too many sheep to not have a guardian, and Woodrow can’t go on forever, as much as we’d all love it if he could.

And like most things we don’t say out loud, we all knew a new puppy was going to be Woodrow’s replacement.

So another little gift from Heaven made his way to us.

These servants of the LORD as my dear friend once said.

This little puppy my daughter and I share, his lazy little personality that matches our big Woodrow’s to a tee…his spunkiness and sweetness a freshness in the house and on the farm…I promise Woodrow every time I see him playing with the puppy that I won’t tell anyone.

He growls at him, he leads him around, he protects him from the marauding geese, he scowls, he lifts his lip, he sniffs him when he sleeps…he watches over him, and in doing so, he teaches him.

These dogs…all dogs…they are servants of the LORD.

Angels here, blessings to make life a little less cold…to bring a little more comfort.

Companionship.

Friendship.

Protection.

Warmth.

They serve a purpose. Every last one of them.

And sometimes, every once in a while in this life…we’re granted a little extra time.

Sometimes it wasn’t our time to say goodbye.

And oh, doesn’t that change things?

Doesn’t that give the heart a little hope? A little reprieve from the heaviness of having to say goodbye today?

The day will come. It always does.

And every single time, they take a piece of us when they go.

But we’ve been given an extra year with Woodrow.

And now, as we smell the snow in the air and see it settling on the mountaintops, my husband telling me there is a grave dug now is a way for him to bring a little peace to my heart.

A way for him to tell me that he loves me, and that he loves my dog too. That he knows what this dog means to me, what dogs mean to all of us.

And that we honor them when we do right by them all the way up until the end, and even after.

What are the odds we’ll have him yet one more winter?

They are slim, but now I know I have a place for him to rest.

He has been a servant of the LORD, and that is what I hear when my husband tells me he has fulfilled my wishes for my big white angel.

That our dog is deserving of the best I can give him.

So in the meantime, we’ll do what we should all strive to do every single day that we are here.

We’ll give all the love we have…

for all the time we’re given.

“All his life he tried to be a good person. Many times, however, he failed. For after all, he was only human. He wasn’t a dog.” -Charles M. Schulz

The Baby

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In true form for me, I was last-minuting some household duties and realized I needed to get my baby signed up for college classes for his junior year of high school.

The baby.

As we wait on hold with the college, I ask him what fun things he wants to do this year now that it’s just him and his ol’ ma. The last one to go through this little homeschool where we read good books and cry together over high math and learn most of the best lessons in the hayfield or on the barnyard.

I think about the days when I was so high strung trying to teach his older siblings that his busyness and need to constantly construct was an intrusion on the school day.

That was before I knew the value in letting them learn how they best learn.

Before I knew how important it was to let their mind fill with things that interested them and to let their creativity flow over the things they were passionate about.

Those are things he taught me, this baby of the family.

The caboose on this crazy train is the one who somehow always brings us all together, either from his sweet and tender-hearted peacemaking, or in allied annoyance at his whistling, tapping, rapping, banging, knocking, or constant need to share the worlds of trivia that swarms in his head and grows while he sleeps.

The baby of the family.

I’m married to one, and it wasn’t until I had one of my own, straight from my womb, -this one has to be the last one, the doctor said after that hard, hard delivery- that I finally understood the beauty and the gravity of the baby of a family.

As a firstborn, I’m the one in control. I’m the one who calls the shots. I’m the one who steers the ship, makes sure everything is just so, that everyone is taken care of, that all the details are tended to.

And years of being married to a roll-with-it, slap-it-together, plan-on-the-fly guy…we argue a lot and why doesn’t he just GET ME? Why doesn’t he just GET IT RIGHT?

But then these babies come along…one…two…three…and the uptight mellows some and the need for perfection gets pushed down to the bottom of the basket right along with the rest of the dirty laundry, and this marvel comes along, this little bundle who ties us all together…who puts a pretty ribbon around the whole package.

His coco brown hair smells of newborn and I brush it with my lips when I walk the room with him in the middle of the night.

Norah Jones plays on the old Bose stereo we play low in our room because she helps him sleep, and his siblings dote on him every waking moment. His big sissy thinks he is her baby, and his other big sissy confides in him, and his big brother takes on a fatherly role and carries him to the changing station for me when it’s time for baby to have a new diaper.

Somehow things change with the baby.

And now, things are still changing with the baby, and when I start the process of his school paperwork, -here we are just a week out from school-year time, I realize he is the last of the students in my little homeschool, and the last of our brood to grow into adulthood.

Somehow in the days between the one when he was born and today, three of my four children have grown into adults.

We have raised a family.

They don’t tell you how quickly it will all go.

Oh, they try. Those grandmothers and the wise women at church.

They tell you Just wait.

Cherish every moment.

But they say it in a way that makes you feel like they are so wise. So seasoned. Like they know how hard you’re working, but that even in that knowing, they know something you just don’t, and maybe never will; something you can’t quite put your fingers on or your heart around.

They assure you and tell you that one day soon, it will get easier, but just you wait. And you feel that one day in a future lifetime, you’ll enter into a world that only the wise, seasoned ones have ventured, and it all feels so foreign as you stand there before them, receiving their warm hugs while breast milk leaks into your bra and rolls down your belly and a little one clings to your knee while the other one runs down the hallway. And maybe your eyes are a little bit forced and wide as you expend every ounce of energy trying to make your face look normal and like it isn’t desperate and longing and feeling beaten and bruised by this life you chose that has you feeling like every day is another chance to run another marathon before you even heat up the skittle for the grilled cheese sandwiches at lunchtime.

They know though. They’re just gentle with us. They don’t want us to be afraid, because they know that really, we already are scared.

We see how fast the years go, even as the days inch.

We see how much they grow, how much they absorb, even as it feels like dinner is a lifetime away.

And the pace of it all makes us fearful.

Because as these children grow, what we don’t realize in the everydayness of dirty laundry and dirty floors and brushing hair and teaching manners and making sure they play outside and don’t eat their boogers but that they do eat enough vegetables…

what we don’t realize is that we are growing right along with them.

We forget that part.

Or maybe not forget; maybe just don’t have time to ponder.

But that is what the wise ones know.

That we are raising those precious ones, yes.

But we are also raising ourselves.

We are growing into women who will one day be wise. We are growing into aunties and sisters and friends who will one day laugh at the days to come, and who won’t worry about changing our face so that others won’t see our fears or how close we’d come to the brink of questioning our sanity as we broke up one more squabble…

No, instead, we are growing into women who will instead embrace. The friends, the fears, AND the uncertainty of our sanity.

We will have walked through a battlefield, a beautiful, wondrous, rolling battlefield…

and we will realize we have grown right along with our children.

That’s what the baby does.

The baby makes a mama realize that really, it will be okay.

That the dirt under the fingernails isn’t neglect; it’s proof that we played.

That the odd blurts and sayings aren’t an illustration of being undisciplined; they are evidence of a free spirit and a decision to embrace life in all its weird and awkward moments of humanity.

That the being late, or being early, or not being there at all isn’t evidence of either being high strung or not caring; it is a flexibility that has fully accepted the fact that life is sometimes really what happens when you’re busy making plans.

The baby makes the firstborn relax.

The baby makes the firstborn enjoy life.

The baby makes the firstborn remember.

That it DOES all go so fast.

That we DO have to cherish every moment.

And that we WILL make it.

So, as he drives me home at the end of a long day -his brown hair long and carefree, blowing in the wind of the open window, I listen to his chatter and smile at the amount of material he covers in our ten-minute drive.

His mind packed full of trivia has to unload it all now and then, and when he feels a connection with someone, he tells of all the things he’s learned in this big world, and soon I’m learning about armor-plating on dinosaurs, which leads to the ideal material for ammunition, which leads to the composition of bullets, which rolls into a brief discussion of radiation and radium, and soon we’re on to the weaponization of diseases by various governments, which delves us into the conspiracy theory side of life as it pertains to the JFK assassination and Ruby Ridge. I make him put a pin in MK Ultra, as my brain is tired, and anyone who has spent more than five minutes with my baby knows the feeling.

He overwhelms with information.

He teaches.

He shares.

He puts a bow on this package of life, and he shows what it means to be part of humanity.

All sides of it.

He loves.

We’ll get him enrolled into his college classes, and I’ll spend my last two years as a homeschool mom with this kid who has really been the one to teach me.

I’ve been casually resting my hand against the headrest of the driver’s seat, and while his long locks blow in the wind, I weave my fingers through the end of his curls and remember his baby brown hair and how it felt on my cheek all those days I cradled him.

How did this all go so fast?

How have I graduated three out of our little homeschool when I was just teaching them how to read, how to count?

How do I have adult children now, young people who are forging their way in life, learning how to lean into their own faith, their own decisions, blazing their own paths?

How are we in the season where we yearn for occasions when we are all in one place at one time, and we stop the clock when that happens?

How is he all that is left of the long years of childhood, those years that seemed to stand still for so long, cradled in the sweet and gentle spot where families are raised?

How are my babies all grown and changing every day from those under my charge to those who are becoming my best friends in life?

How is it just he and I now in this world of mother and child?

He talks and talks, and I laugh at all he knows.

At all the ways he is different from me, but that he is out of me.

He is of me.

How did it go so fast?

What are we going to do this year, bud? It’s never been just me and you.

He opens the sunroof and talks about petrichor and why it smells the way it does after rain, and how much he loves Alaska and her dark forests in the summertime, even as I get a strong whiff of autumn coming through the open windows.

It will be a long winter.

They always are.

But somehow these ten minutes make it all seem a little shorter, and I feel a little wiser.

These days are short, but our years have been long, even as fast as they’ve gone by.

Maybe I have some of the wisdom now of the older ones.

Maybe I’m starting to understand.

The battlefield of motherhood is beautiful.

He doesn’t know it, but as he drives and keeps chatting on and on, I quietly twist his curls up a little bit more around my fingers…

…and I pretend that he is still my baby.

“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb.” – Jeremiah 1:5

To Making it Through Winter

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He’s been slowing down some and doing a lot of panting, and my heart isn’t quite ready for the next round of labs that will tell me what I already know.

So I pick at his fur, releasing the massive white mats his coat lets go of this time of year, and he rests his big head on my knee while I tell him what a good boy he is.

He’s never far from me and the other day when I put him in the old pig pasture with my little horse who was craving some of the new green treats growing so tall, he sat by the gate and watched me walk away, then went exploring and grazing with Wishes.

I’m not sure why God saw me fit to grace me with such a perfect dog.

The baby girl graduates today, and somehow we all made it through another winter, and isn’t it wonderful when summer finally comes?

Sunshine and warmth, grass and flowers, and we put in some peonies finally after all these years of talking about it, and I feel the ice melting from my bones.

New, good jobs for the kids, fresh horizons on their life, smiles and joy as our house is a never-ending revolving door of them coming and going and stepping into all that is ahead.

I am proud.

I am happy.

A new season lies ahead and soon there will be a puppy in the mix, one who’ll relieve our old boy of his drive and instinct to protect us. Who’ll maybe make him feel young again. Who will eventually replace him.

So when the man up the road comes to do the dirt work with his excavator for the new little cabin going in for my mother, I know when I see my husband walk over and talk to him that he’s quietly asking if he wouldn’t t mind using his equipment to dig one more hole on the property; a big one there under that black spruce where his wife is going to want to lay her best companion to rest here in not too long.

I bought a Quaking Aspen and a Burr Oak I’ll plant there when the day comes because isn’t that just like my Woodrow? Quaking and mighty.

It’s so good when summer comes.

But even in the joy, it’s hard to know fall is just around the corner.

Fifty Things from Fifty Years

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Be a friend to yourself. You might be the only one at times.

Keep true friends close and cherish them always.

Your true friends may be the ones you rarely see. That’s okay.

Not everyone who acts like your friend is. Protect your heart.

But live openly and honestly, trusting the good in people.

Jesus is the best friend you will ever have, and He will never leave you. Ever.

People in the church will disappoint you. Keep going. If you can’t stay at the church you’re at, find one that feels like coming home.

God will sometimes seem to disappoint you too, but He knows the whole story line and we don’t. He can be trusted.

Not everyone will like you. This is a hard pill to swallow when you are a likeable person. But not liking you is about them and not you. Suck it up and keep on keeping on.

Sometimes you have to make your circle small.

Don’t look back; you’re not going that way. Remind yourself of that often.

Love your people fiercely. They are all you have on this earth.

Let yourself rest. The older you get, the more you need to listen to this need and let your body and mind rest.

Push yourself though if you feel your mind and body getting lazy. Being productive flexes our creativity and is something we are made to be.

Mark one weekend twice a year (or each quarter if you can!) on your calendar with big black X’es. Don’t let anything encroach upon your Black X weekend. That is for you and your family to reconnect, rest, recharge. No outside commitments, only what you decide to do or not do. You might have to move your Black X weekend, but don’t let it get too far away.

The years of raising babies and small children will fly by in a blur, and when you come to the end of their childhoods, you’ll be left with an underneath, quiet ache so deep you’ll spend years trying to quietly get your bearings.

Your adult children will become some of the best friends you could ever dream of for yourself. They know the best and the worst of you, and they love you deeply, and you’ve loved them from the very first moment they were yours.

Stop what you are doing when you find yourself in a quiet moment with your children. Life can get so fast and so busy, we can forget that a moment to connect with the heart of our children is a gift from Heaven.

Well meaning experts and friends tell us to make it a priority to have a date night with our spouse, with each of our children, with our girlfriends…do that if you can. But if you can’t, don’t feel guilty about it. Sometimes a scheduled date causes more stress and burden than any relief or connection, so do what works for your family to have quality time together, whatever that looks like for you.

But don’t forget to make the people in your family feel treasured and special, and spend bits of time with each of them, building connections.

Invest in your marriage. Take time away when you can. Pay for the late check-out. Stay two nights. Go to the marriage conference. Or just go to coffee. Make the time. You have to. It’s worth it.

Spend time in God’s creation. Make time for nature breaks to clear your mind and your spirit.

There is no love like the love of an old dog.

There is no lesson from a book that will compare to teaching your children to care for animals and babies.

Don’t let your hangups about sex get in the way of a healthy and vibrant love life with your spouse. Work through it together and enjoy one another. It is the superglue in marriage.

Homegrown meat, produce, and eggs are the very best you will find. If you can’t grow your own, find you a source to buy from. And always use the bones from your homegrown to make stock or bone broth. It is healing for the body and the soul and will make the best soup you’ve ever had. The bones, water, and a big pot or crockpot are all you need.

Hire help if it helps you keep your peace. You don’t have to do everything yourself, and sometimes you just plain can’t.

Your beauty truly is on the inside. There are people who are physically beautiful, but a loving and loyal heart is more beautiful than any physical attributes.

There is a time to keep your silence, but don’t ever be afraid to speak up when you have something to add to a conversation.

Be an encourager. Life is so hard sometimes; the kind word you say to someone today may steer their course toward a better tomorrow.

Nurture people. Sometimes we all just need a hug and a snack.

Some people are adventurous, and some people like the familiar. Both are okay.

Set the tone. You have the power to set the tone. Use it.

Don’t be too busy or too self-conscious to smile. This world needs more genuine smiles, and they connect us.

Be a listener. Really listen when someone is talking to you.

People aren’t here to make you happy. It isn’t all about you. Don’t try to make it be.

Stay in your lane. Life, and traffic, moves so much easier when we all just stay in our lane.

Don’t be afraid to tell someone that you love them. It may be awkward to be vulnerable and share your heart, but people need to hear that you treasure them.

Be a critical thinker. Research for yourself. Our world and our news are both a mess. Do the digging and learn for yourself what a situation is instead of eating what someone else has regurgitated and fed you.

Read. Good literature, the Bible, biographies, poetry…just read. Our books are national treasures. Treasure them.

Read aloud to your family. Kids’ books, chapter books, poetry, the encyclopedia, biographies….read things your people enjoy and read it enthusiastically and with a learner’s mind. Never stop. Books are bonding for families.

Don’t ever be afraid to show your soft side.

But be ready to fight for what is right when someone needs your strength.

Don’t ever not be an advocate for those who need a voice.

Your home is your haven. Not your magazine perfect photo opportunity, but your haven. Make sure what happens there is restful, replenishing, and safe for all who dwell there.

Teach your children how to work hard. In their homes, on their farms, on their projects, in their jobs…kids need to learn to work: for their families, for themselves, for their money. Work ethic is imperative.

You will have times in which you feel completely overwhelmed and are not sure how you will do what needs doing. You will get it done. It will happen. Listen to your body, listen to your emotions, listen to your people, listen to the LORD. It will get done. You will survive.

Don’t give up on marriage unless you absolutely have to. Long marriages are rarer and rarer and are a true gift and blessing.

Treasure your spouse and never give up on learning about them and showing and telling them that you love and cherish them.

Life is a precious, precious gift. Every day won’t be easy, and some days will be just plain hard. But the days add up to weeks, and the weeks add up to months, and the months add up to years…and the more years that go by, the more you realize how short they really are, and that all of them added up make a lifetime, and it is a one-time experience and a gift that is to be stewarded and tended to and cherished and nurtured. Enjoy the gift of yours.

~

Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12

~

The Story – Brandi Carlile

All of these lines across my face

Tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been

And how I got to where I am.

But these stories don’t mean anything

When you’ve got no one to tell them to

It’s true, I was made for you.

I climbed across the mountain tops

Swam all across the ocean blue

I cross all the lines and I broke all the rules

But, baby I broke them all for you.

Because even when I was flat broke

You made me feel like a million bucks

You do, and I was made for you.

You see the smile that’s on my mouth

It’s hiding the words that don’t come out

And all of my friends who think that I’m blessed

They don’t know my head is a mess.

No, they don’t know who I really am

And they don’t know what I’ve been through like you do

And I was made for you.

All of these lines across my face

Tell you the story of who I am

So many stories of where I’ve been

And how I got to where I am.

Oh but these stories don’t mean anything

When you’ve got no one to tell them to

It’s true, I was made for you.

Oh yeah, it’s true…

I was made for you.

~

To my beloved Matthew and our precious four children… it’s true; I was made for you.

Dilated Cardiomyopathy

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We left before the sun came up and got home after it had slipped behind the mountains.

Fifteen hours for one menopausal mama and one introverted farm dog -both of whom who would probably prefer to spend the remainder of their days never leaving the farm- well, it’s a trek, and a really big deal, and an hour into the drive of our long day when he started breathing funny, I near turned my rig around to bring us both and back to the ranch.

Maybe it was a mistake loading him up and asking him to ride in the middle row of my rig for four hours one way through the mountains.

I’d laid out his special blanket across the seats, and my daughter had conveniently left a large wad of hay in the cargo area from the night before when she’d borrowed Mom’s SUV to haul her ram to a hot date with his new girlfriends.

Even surrounded by familiar smells of home, when his gums and tongue turned ashy, and his brown eyes searched mine questioningly as his breaths from the sweet, big white head propped tiredly on the backside of the passenger seat became short and shallow, I doubted my decision to take him to the big city docs and wondered through streaming tears what exactly my plan was should he die in my backseat while I traveled the empty, dark, mountainous, two-lane highway.

He pepped up when we stopped at the last gas station, and he peed long when I let him walk in the grass, and the two of us bravely navigated the big city and all its noises and loud cars right as the sun crested the mountain tops.

The sweet and precious vet with eyes that smiled at him and cried with me was an answer to the prayer i had hoping for a compassionate person who was knowledgeable and found quick and definitive answers to what was ailing our sweet boy.

She gave him tests and then she told me what I already knew:

His heart is too big.

This dog, this wonderful and beautiful gentle-hearted servant who loves me with every ounce of him, trusting me unflinchingly even after the confusion of being left at the shelter by the family he first served, even with all of his quirky insecurities and fears of the ceiling fan, and wayward balloons, and tall boys with long hair that carry guns…his heart is huge and he loves this farm and this family steady and there is no where he’d rather be than resting his soft head gently on the knee of one of his people or curled up in the cool of mom’s corner bathroom closet where he can nap and watch his people through his dozing.

Physically, his heart is not constricting properly, causing it to expand in volume and stay enlarged, quivering around in his barrel chest trying to do what hearts do, stay in rhythm.

Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) affects specific breeds as well as large and giant breeds of dogs. Had we known prior to him being symptomatic, there is a fairly positive prognosis that dogs can be treated and live years. That he was symptomatic though means he is in congestive heart failure, and the only treatment method is to keep the fluid off his heart and lungs, and medicate the heart in the hopes to help it work more efficiently.

So here we are again, our fifth dog in the thirty years of our life together that we will be loving on up to the end of their life, giving them the good love of a family as we keep our canine comfortable and cared for.

I’ve chosen a spot on the barnyard where I’ll have the fellas dig his grave before it gets too cold, and we’ve got a whole new medication routine to incorporate into his daily life. The wild salmon from my wild boy is keeping him eating each day, and now that we know exactly what is happening inside of him, we know what to watch for and how best to care for him.

Our sweet new veterinarian friend gave him a mild sedative for his long trip home, and after two hours into our return trek, he finally laid down and closed his eyes for some rest, knowing somehow that we were going back to the farm.


On our big adventure he visited a dog park at the vet’s office; he saw one of his favorite girls in the big city for a quick pit stop, he got to pee in the same grass twice at a busy gas station, and he met some of the most top notch professionals who gave us some solid answers and who are helping us to stay in rhythm with him while we do the same for his heart.

It wasn’t the best news we could have hoped for, but as I came home last night I thanked the LORD for letting me bring my dog home: Back then, those four years ago when we were called about this weird, strange breed at the shelter -the same breed I had been researching all winter the year our Annie died- this huge white dog who needed a new farm to guard; and then again yesterday, after the long trip up took so much of him and left me doubting myself and my decision to take him.

Just like I knew the minute I met him at the shelter that I was making the right decision to bring him home, I knew yesterday as we snaked back through the mountains with the sun casting a golden glow on each hillside that I had made the right choice to seek out answers, and I am so thankful to have some.

This is easier than cancer in some ways – the mass that was showing on the x-rays was actually fluid buildup, and while fluid is easy to take off, the outcome to both is the same.

We will one day soon have to say goodbye to our big white servant.

We will nurse him and love him and help him stay in rhythm, and one day soon we will lay him to rest here on the farm he so loves.

But until then, we will give him everything we can for him to fight each day, and we will love him.

Him and his big heart.

I’m Not Ready…the Mantra I Seem to be Repeating More and More Often the Older I Get

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I woke up this morning at 4 a.m. to a strange bark and when I got up and looked out the window, I saw his large ghostly white shape sitting between the stand pipes of the septic field, just sitting there tall and looking at the house as if he’d made it halfway down to check the pen where his old friend Sean the pig used to live, but decided to give up on his way down, instead turning around to sit a spell and see if the boss was up.

He’s my first LGD (Livestock Guardian Dog), and he came to our farm in a way that could’ve only been orchestrated from Heaven, and he is soft and sweet like a favorite childhood stuffie, and trembly and handsome and noble like Oz’s Cowardly Lion, and he loves Mom like I birthed him myself, and he is gentle enough to take to the nursing home after getting his Canine Good Citizen certification with the rest of Mom’s 4-H kids’ dogs, and all the while barking like a locomotive train at any sign or scent of danger to our farm in the middle of the night.

I called to him through the screen and the tall white shape just sat there, still and alert, watching the house. There was such a stillness and quiet, I wondered if the dark of the morning had my eyes tricking me and that maybe I was just seeing an extra tall standpipe I’d never noticed before, or one of my daughter’s devil geese.

I put my glasses on, and sure enough, it was my good old boy, sitting there with his noble body facing the house, staring straight at the bedroom window side of the house, on alert and just watching.

I plodded to the back door to let him in, looking down through the cracks of the back porch, still thinking I’d been mistaken and that he would come scooting out of his cool hidey hole under the steps.

I heard the Great Horned Owl hooting from his tree when I opened the door…that shyster that Levi named Owen way back last spring -hey, where have you been, old owl? We haven’t heard hide nor hair from you all summer long…and I called out to Woodrow, -maybe that really wasn’t him in the bedroom window?- and I still expected he’d come wiggling out of his favorite hiding spot there under the porch and bound up the steps as always, happy to get back to his favorite place, on the cool floor right next to Mom’s side of the bed.

He wasn’t under the porch, so that was definitely him staring at our windows, and after a couple calls, he came sauntering around the side of the house, and his normal leap was instead a quiet and determined trek up the steps, and he followed me across the house back to our room, leaving me to wonder what it was on the barnyard that had him staring so serenely at the windows through which his favorite people slumbered.

Last week it was just a pesky grass seed lodged in his throat when I took him in because of some discomfort in his breathing -it happens often this time of year I learned- but he’s been quietly telling us since then that there is something inside of him that just isn’t right.

He’s been staring at me all week, and instead of his normal big white head-flop into our laps, he’s taken to quietly standing beside me, looking intently into my eyes when I ask if he’s okay…

And why is it that the older we get, the more we live on the brink of just a breath away from saying goodbye?

Our precious vet team welcomed him in this morning, assuring me they’d squeeze him in between appointments to do some investigating into my concerns that “something is just off.”

After dropping him off, I hadn’t made it fifteen minutes up the road before Woodrow’s sweet doctor called and said she is not sure how he is still standing or still breathing.

The mass on his lungs has taken up three-quarters of his chest capacity, so big in fact, that his actual lungs were barely visible on the x-ray, and his heart was nowhere to be seen.

Euthanasia was the most likely and immediate treatment plan, and I took a few minutes to get my air, make the needed calls, and head back to pick him up.

How do we say goodbye to our best friend?

How do we let go a creature who is so part of our team…so part of our farm…so part of our family…so part of our hearts?

I drove back to the vet’s office and they all came to mind….Bo the police puppy…Annie, all shot up in the woods and carrying the world’s most-loved litter of pups…our other Beau, the big one, standing on his strong little legs for his girl every single day of his colic and not laying his sweet little big noble body down until it was time for him to leave this earth….Daisy, all swollen and sore and peacefully slipping away when we loaded her up and told her she was going home…Charlotte, surprising us with an unknown ailment that put her down in the mud so quickly we had barely enough time to haul her up and bring her to warmth before she left us…Todd and Opie, precious friends of our family who’d suffered all the loss all at one time…all the little critters my children have loved and that my husband has mercifully sent into eternity…

And now my Woodrow.

My big boy, my sweet boy, the one we brought home to guard the farm, but the one who instead decided he’d guard me.

My white floof of a giant who was destined to be penned next to the livestock while we took the hands-off approach so many LGD owners swear by before I found the folks who know the real way, the best way…the sister-family who taught me how to show him the love of a family and that in doing so, he would come to protect those who loved him and all that is precious to them.

How many will we say goodbye to over the course of a lifetime?

How is a dog so stoic and strong that a basketball grows in his chest and he never once whimpers?

How is it fair that their lives are so much shorter than ours that we know them for a fraction of our lifespan, just enough time to fall in love and develop a friendship like no other, and just in time to see the life of love slip from their brave and knowing eyes?

I brought him home today, and after his x-ray, our loving vet let him wander the office, gentlemanly and quiet, only showing signs of stress when my truck pulled back into the parking lot to retrieve him and he put his head through the screen on their window trying to get to me.

She saw his stoicism, and maybe she just saw my love for him, but it was more than likely her love for all creatures great and small that prompted her to recommend we just let him fight.

Because don’t all of God’s creatures deserve that?

“Let’s throw everything at him and pray I’m wrong.”

That’s what she said and isn’t that what we do?

I tell my kids that every single time…so many times when you’re a farmer and a lover of animals…

“We’ll do every single thing we can to give them a chance to fight for life.”

And then when the fight is done, they’ll let us know.

So I gathered up the meds she prescribed, and when a dog is of a size that they need to call one of his scripts into the local pharmacy, did you know that you can get your animal’s prescription right there at the little counter where you pick up your thyroid medication each month?

And a farmer will do what a farmer does, and if it takes too long to get the medication, she’ll just pull some of those meds from the family medicine cabinet.

Now both of the sweet old men I live with take the same medication, one just a bit more than the other, and my Reluctant Farmer doesn’t mind sharing his until the pharmacy can fill the script for Woodrow Rankin, K-9.

It was two years to the day those same two old men lounged, one sick on the brink of death, waiting for test results to tell us what was taking the life out of him, the other, a constant presence by his side, comforting…being comforted from the confusion of seeing his boss man down.

Two old fragile vessels, not china cups or a delicate piece like the Bible speaks of when we read “weaker vessel”, but tough old oaken whiskey barrels, bound by steel and strength and years of care and stoicism and oil, and all the years of love and care and time and the best of a family’s flavor.

So many times he’s walked by our side, or walked in front of us to protect us from what his thousands of years of guardian instincts tell him is a danger to his people: the screaming sow he stood in front of while my wee babe Levi walked by her pen…the cat today with paralyzed back legs that scooted herself across the floor to come say hi just to hiss at him when he got in the way of me petting her…the raven he’s growled at as she flew too closely to the geese who hate him…the countless black bear, moose, and coyote he’s prevented from coming onto our property by laying down a scent perimeter around the precious five acres that he has claimed as his people’s…

So many times.

He’s loved us, and in doing so, he’s protected us.

I didn’t know before I had an LGD what it meant to own an LGD.

I didn’t know that in letting him in to love US, that he would BECOME us.

I didn’t know that when he became us, he would become my best friend.

I’ve never talked to a dog like I’ve talked to a full grown adult.

My kids tease him about being a baby, about being a coward.

“He’s Mom’s favorite”, they joke.

“He’s such a baby”, they tease when he flops his head down on Dad’s knee, craving for the head rubs we all endlessly give him.

“He’s a chicken”, they say when he shies from the coyote standing in the yard after he’s alerted us to it and the gun comes out.

“He’s a scaredy cat”, they say when he cowers from the ceiling fan sixteen feet up as he scurries across the living room.

And the thing is, he is a baby.

He is a chicken.

He is a scaredy cat.

And while ALL of my babies are my favorite, he very well could be my favorite dog.

Because he loves us just as fiercely as I love him.

He might be my cowardly lion, but we don’t have predators on our farm.

Since Woodrow came to us that spring day four years ago, we haven’t lost an animal to predation, and while his favorite hidey hole is under the porch or in my cool closet, we don’t suffer from the threat of bears, or moose, or coyote, or eagles, or paralyzed cats or anything else that would harm his boss or the things that are important to her, whether it be animal or land or child or husband.

Today I visited a pot shop for the first time in my life, and I’ve added CBD to the regime of medication his precious and matchless medical team have given him.

We’ll put on hands on his body every moment we get and we’ll pray to the Father who gave him to us that the medication and the herbs will work to give us more time with the majestic creature He’s blessed us with.

We are thankful.

We love him so. I think as much as he loves us, although he loves us so strong, as only a good dog can.

We will try to show him we love him the same, and we’ll do it for as long as we have him.

As I took the morning to process what my Woodrow’s diagnosis means for him, for our family, I am mourning the fact that his 11-14 year expected lifespan has been cut dramatically short.

I am processing the loss of the people -and the animals- we’ve lost since bringing him onto our farm.

The loss my friends have suffered…jobs, animals, homes, family…

We get older and we’re not ready, and today I’m just not ready.

I’m thankful for the gift of life…the gift of love…

but I’m just not ready to let him go.

I’m not ready.


For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine. Psalm 50:10-11

One Year Since

2 Replies

Sometimes when you’re stoic and stubborn, you might be a bit surprised when things take a bit of time to process.

One year ago today, Matt had been in the hospital a week and the battle to get him to a hospital Outside was underway.

While Covid held our hospital in its icy grip -the whole nation’s hospitals for that matter…thousands of patients isolated and alone in hospital beds without loved ones near…the team working on Matt was a hodge podge group of overworked, temporary medical workers; doctors, nurses, and case managers shipped up from the Lower 48, surgeons unwilling to do cardio thoracic surgeries due to not knowing the OR; case managers unwilling to do any sort of work that required a sense of urgency or that crossed time zones.

Matt was a low maintenance patient because even though the infection was actively ravaging his heart tissues, the hospital had already established they would not be doing the high risk surgery he was most likely going to need.

It was easy to start his round of antibiotics, monitor his vitals, and then forget about him.

That sounds harsh, but that is what happened. He was caught up in a quagmire of insurance approvals and paperwork sitting too long on desks…his last week at the hospital, he wasn’t even assigned a nurse. They put him on the roster of the charge nurse, who only came if Matt needed anything.

Because there was never enough staff, he went fourteen days without a shower.

The fight to get him to Mayo was a ten-day ordeal, and it wasn’t until the embolli of his infection started breaking off, entering his blood stream and causing his heart to arrest that his shambly medical team finally realized they needed to do what I had been begging them to, and they said “we gotta get this boy outta here.”

When God send a jet for my Matthew on my birthday, it wasn’t until I was taxiing on the outbound plane to Minnesota and got the text from his flight team that they were wheels down and Mayo-bound that my body let loose with quiet sobs of relief, and for the first time in nineteen days, I knew my husband was going to live.

The Mayo team had him studied from his hair to his toe nails that first week, and six days after he landed, one of the best cardio thoracic surgeons in the world used his delicate and brilliant hands to snip and stitch my husband’s rugged, pure heart and undo all the damage the infection had done.

I had to write about it all the while, and in writing I was processing. Sorting. Praying. Thanking.

When they finally let me see him ten hours later, he was heavily sedated and wanting to sit up and pull out his vent upon hearing my voice.

It took me and two nurses and another shot to quietly calm him down enough to sleep once again, and that was the saddest night I’ve ever spent in my whole life.

I won’t ever forget my big strong husband, helpless and hooked up to a million machines, a quiet tear streaming down his temple, just wanting to heave and ho like he always does, but not having control of his body enough to come up from the depths and see his beloved.

It’s funny what a writer’s heart remembers, and some smells, sounds, and moments will take me right back and I am almost there, reading the Psalms with Matt or visiting with the day’s nurse.

Just over twelve hours after his surgeon jump-started Matt’s big heart back up, the angels in ICU spent an hour of their shift packing their patient up for the 20-foot road trip, and he and his entourage started up the hall for his first walk on his new rebuild.

The brilliance and resilience God built into mankind will never cease to amaze me.

I flew home with him ten days later and we cashed in miles for first class, and three months to the day that he had received two brand-new carbon valves into his heart and some Bondo on his aorta, he was back to work in the oilfield, fixing up the oil rigs just like his surgeon fixed up his heart.

This month I’ve spent a lot of time in reflection and when I shared with one of my dear sisters that things feel off this fall, she knows me well enough to know that I probably didn’t take the time I needed to process the trauma of what we endured.

How long does it take though?

I have my husband with me while there are far too many who look at an empty pillow across the bed and long for their mate whose time on this earth was cut too short.

How long does it take for your feet to feel firm on the ground after coming off stormy seas?

A whole year and we have loved on our babies and my 4-H kids and our church family and each other.

He’s turned 50, I’ve turned silver, and we’ve long since turned our attention toward getting our normal back to normal.

Yet still.

Maybe it takes awhile.

Maybe being stoic also means being slower, and maybe being stubborn means allowing yourself the time you need.

Maybe.

It’s been one year since.

I Wasn’t Ready

4 Replies

To the fella in the nice blue Chevy pickup with the two kayaks on the roof… yes, you, gentleman who was so angry with me this morning when I waited a bit too long to turn there at the corner by the car wash…

I owe you an apology.

You might owe me one too, I’ll let you decide, but I wanted to take a minute and tell you I’m sorry for pausing to wait for that one extra car to go by.

I could’ve made the turn, heck, as you know, I could’ve probably made the turn three times over in those five extra seconds that you and I sat there in the left-hand turn lane.

I thought about just going on ahead and turning -even started to pivot my ankle a bit toward the accelerator, but then I didn’t.

Probably on any other day I would have, or if we lived in a different place, you wouldn’t have had to wonder in frustration what the slowpoke lady with big sunglasses in the silver Yukon was doing. If we lived in a fast paced city, or if it was any other day, I probably would have just zoomed on around the corner without that pause.

But because of where we live…and because of it being today…I didn’t.

I just sat there for that extra second because truth be known, I just wan’t ready.

I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to make the turn, but if we’re being honest here, I could go back to early this morning when my husband suggested maybe I drive us to town today.

I wasn’t ready for that.

See, my man has been driving his princess around this world for on about thirty years now, and we’ve ridden in many chariots (our first being a blue pickup too, and while I will admit yours is nice, his holds a pretty special place in my heart, that big old beefy Ford he used to have to sometimes help me up into, especially when I wore that little jean mini skirt he liked to see his darlin wear).

There’s been a constant stream of old Fords since, and a whole bunch of SUVs to haul all these kids all these years, and then a steady stream of teenagers with their big feet on the gas pedal, and he’s taught them to drive those same vehicles too…but I’ve been his shotgun rider in all those rigs for all these years and we hold hands over the console and he wraps his big muscly paw around my littler one and he keeps me warm in the quiet.

But my man’s been pretty sick, and today he had a pretty important medical appointment, and the big muscles he used to use to help heft me and hold me are now being used solely to keep his shrinking frame upright…but we still held hands across the console, it’s just me keeping him warm now, his big paw getting smaller, but still much bigger than mine, so my fingers just wrap around his fist and that seems to be just fine with him.

So I drove today.

I wasn’t ready for that.

And while we’re talking about princesses, let’s talk about this one not being ready to pump her own gas on our way to town.

I’m not sure if that’s what I was thinking about there in that moment you and I shared in the turn lane, but it was on my mind quite a bit this morning.

How for the past thirty years my man has taken such good care of this woman, it’s been a rarity for me to ever pump gas.

I thought of how he always taught our boys that a gentleman carries heavy stuff and opens doors and pumps the gas for his lady…so with a house full of teens, how spoiled am I that I have almost forgotten what to do at the gas pump?

I pumped the gas today and I wasn’t ready for that.

I made a joke about how I’ve had that silver Yukon over a year now, the nicest vehicle I’ve ever owned, a limo to me really…my man drove himself to work and back every day for years in a beat up little Ford Ranger until it died just so his woman and kids could have a nice ride, a safe ride…and here just now today I didn’t know how to open the little door to put the gas in.

I laughed about it and made him smile, but deep down I was sad, because I wasn’t ready for him to not be pumping my gas.

I wasn’t ready.

I know you were upset. I knew I had kept you waiting, made you sit that extra five seconds there with me…that’s why I looked at you apologetically in my mirror.

I saw you shaking your head and raising your arms at me. I know what you were thinking, I’ve thought the same thing a thousand times in my decades of driving alongside people who have momentary lapses like I did this morning.

That is why I gave you a thumbs up. I was letting you know that yeah, I’m okay, I just spaced it for a second but I’ll move my ass along here as soon as this next batch of cars goes by.

I felt bad, hoping you weren’t on your way to work.

I saw your peppered gray beard and I felt like we knew each other for a second there, because there right next to me was another peppered-grey handsome fella, and how funny is it that he gets grumpy too with other drivers sometimes, and he’ll grumble at them, even as he’s forgotten to click on his blinker, or when he’s tailgating in a way that he knows drives me crazy.

You’ll like to know that right after I finally turned, he grumbled at me too when I drove like a dingbat into the car wash. He didn’t know it was because my eyes were a bit blurry and watery, and that the car wash was really just a diversion to postpone us from going to the next appointment and finding out what it was that they’d found inside him.

Because I wasn’t ready for that either.

I hope you don’t think I’m mad at you, becuase I promise I’m not. And this isn’t one of those snarky, sounds-nice-but-is-really-a-low-key-bitchy-post-to-prove-a-point post. I promise.

Because all we have to do right now is take one look at this world around us…those 13 gone forever…our nation crumbling…this virus run rampant…our people divided…and it could all just take us out at the knees.

We don’t need more negativity.

So when I saw that you were getting more and more frustrated with me, that’s when I blew you a kiss.

I know, crazy right?

I’m betting you had to share with your wife or your co-workers about the crazy lady blowing you kisses out her side mirror this morning, but hear me out.

One time a long time ago, I was at the post office and found myself in this weird stand off while I sat in my vehicle waiting to cross the little road. Along came a vehicle driven by a man who thought I was going to go the wrong way on a one-way alley way.

I wasn’t, but he didn’t know that, so we had about five seconds of waiting together, staring at each other, just like you and I did this morning.

He sat in his car and gestured at me.

I sat in mine and gestured at him.

I cocked my head in wonder.

He waved.

I shook my head in disbelief.

And then he blew me a kiss.

And I laughed and laughed.

I have never forgotten that silly little exchange because in that moment, me laughing, and then him laughing, and then both of us waving…our humanity connected.

I promise I wasn’t giving you the bird this morning.

I was blowing you a kiss.

I was, in that moment maybe somehow just trying to connect our humanity? I don’t know, it sounds so crazy you know, but it was just a reflex and a weird little action that bundled up all my fears and all my doubts and all my sadness and all my needing just a moment to find my feet up under me and take the next step…

I just wasn’t ready to turn yet.

I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to drive my man around, I wasn’t ready to pump my own gas, I wasn’t ready for the oncology appointment we were making our way towards.

So I paused a second.

I wish you would have waved and smiled at me.

I know, I know…crazy lady what are you even *talking* about?

I would have probably done exactly what you did; zoom around and let the slowpoke driver know that you had WAY too much to do today to be held up waiting for one more car.

I wish you hadn’t done that though.

I don’t want you to get hurt.

I don’t want your princess to be without you.

I don’t want her to have to pump her own gas.

I don’t want your big strong body to not be able to drive.

And if I were writing to make a point, I guess the only point would be is that…

sometimes a gal just isn’t ready.

Oh, I WILL be.

I know where I’m heading.

And I know where my fella is going to be too.

But when the preacher asked us all last Sunday Are you ready?, I had to sit there a second, my arm around my baby, my man back home resting, I had to just think about that.

Aren’t we always supposed to live as if we are ready to go Home?

The Bible tells us to have oil in our lamps and be ready to go any second.

Heck, even the inspirational signs at Walmart tell us to live every day like it’s our last.

But sometimes a little bump in our trail will make us doubt how well prepared we are for the trip ahead.

Sometimes one of our neighbors might be in a struggle they aren’t quite ready to talk about just yet but could still maybe use a smile and a neighborly wave as we drive by their house.

Sometimes the weight of a whole world, and the sorrow of all those parents can lay heavy on a heart and leave the senses a little raw with sadness, and the clerk at the grocery store could maybe use a nice word when the cash register makes us wait a while.

Sometimes a mama might just be a little dull in the reflexes and doubting herself and her ability to navigate traffic and the road ahead so she might just stand there a second too long.

I’m okay with you being mad at me, heck, I’d probably be mad at me too.

But I wish our humanity could have connected instead.

Because then you would’ve understood…

While most days I’m confident and decisive…quick and zippy those times I do drive…

This morning I just had a moment when the bump in the trail made me doubt my ability to walk the road ahead.

I’m so sorry that I held you up.

I hope you’ll read this and know that the lady blowing you a kiss really wasn’t crazy.

I just wasn’t ready.

Psalm 121

1-2 I look up to the mountains;
    does my strength come from mountains?
No, my strength comes from God,
    who made heaven, and earth, and mountains.

3-4 He won’t let you stumble,
    your Guardian God won’t fall asleep.
Not on your life! Israel’s
    Guardian will never doze or sleep.

5-6 God’s your Guardian,
    right at your side to protect you—
Shielding you from sunstroke,
    sheltering you from moonstroke.

7-8 God guards you from every evil,
    he guards your very life.
He guards you when you leave and when you return,
    he guards you now, he guards you always.

Long as I Can See the Light, John Fogerty…one of my man’s favorite songs.