Yesterday, I got to enjoy a simple pleasure that has been mine since childhood: I watched a cotton picker roll through the red dirt and begin the fall harvest season. When I was a kid, there was no greater adventure than riding on the pickers with my uncles—now run by my cousins—or spending an afternoon tumbling around a wagonload of cotton.There's something beautiful, to me, in generations of family stewardship of those fields.
I'll be honest here—I need moments like that because right now, the ugliness of The Big Bad World is just too much. I can't listen to any more hate-spewing. Forget being compassionate or tolerant—we aren't even civil most of the time. It's overwhelming because, other than controlling my own actions and voting my conscience, there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.
So what can I do? Everything possible to make MY world—my personal world—a safe and comforting place—making time for the people I care about, giving more of myself to them and wasting less energy stressing over things I can't control or change. I can wrap up in a blanket and sip my morning coffee on our deck. I can sleep with my windows open. I can relish time with the two little boys next door who delight in sneaking out of their yard and invading the Story Shack (which now has alphabet magnets on the metal back door and a treat basket by the front door—yes, I'm a total pushover). I can be so thankful for Dave and my parents and our families and friends. I can pray for a more peaceful, healthy, stable future for all of us. And before the cotton harvest is over, I might even steal a ride on that big machine. I might watch it gather clouds of white from a field of red dirt and be reminded that the end of one season promises the beginning of another.
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