Friday, August 24, 2007

Choosing the Country


Fifteen miles from town and almost a mile down a gravel road, you'll find a tree lined, grassy lane that leads to our new front porch in the country. The house is smaller than the one we sold in Burnet, but comfortably so.

There's a large pond in the front yard that spills over into another pond on the side of the house. Calin and Codi Ann have already caught countless sun perch (that they dutifully threw back) in both ponds. A rather large community of turtles inhabit both ponds.

At night, the frogs provide wide range of unusual songs. At times they sound like an auditorium full of cuckoo clocks out of control and other times it sounds like hundreds of tech devices on the blink. We enjoy sitting on the porch with a glass of wine and listening to them while fireflies flit here and there on the warm summer night. It's simply wonderful.

This house and this place are just exactly what we were hoping for. The postmaster in the Red Rock post office knows my name. That's nice. On our first night in the house, we had nothing to cook so I ran into the little Red Rock grocery store to pick up something and found one of Mike's Leanin' Tree posters tacked above one of the doors.

Yes, we must drive 16 miles to do big grocery or hardware shopping but it's okay. We're learning to shop better. We had to tear out the kitchen and are in the middle of putting in a whole new one and yes, it's back breaking work. But when I stand back and look at the transformation, it brings me great joy. Joy to see our vision slowly coming to life and pride in knowing we did it ourselves. There will be more remodeling down the road as time and funds allow but for now, we're thrilled with our new home.

It's amazing what can come about when we let go and let God lead the way.

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