Soul Set Free

     So, I have a question for you: who here still uses Pinterest? Not many? Okay well, I've just showed my age as simultaneously too young and   too old.  XD If you've frequented Pinterest at any point over the past 5 years or so, you've probably noticed its migration from fancy craft inspo to more of a social networking platform. And with that migration comes a natural consequence: memes.       I'll shoot straight with you: I love myself a good meme. I even have a board solely dedicated to them that now has a carefully curated collection of over 600 pins. Is that a little embarrassing? Maybe... But the laughs were absolutely worth it!  Since my appreciation for memes has been firmly established, there's one meme in particular that had the cogs of my brain turning several weeks ago. And I'd love to share it with you! Here it is: Isn't it just the cutest?! I love the artistic style, and the saying makes me giggle. It's so  true...

      I don't know about you, but I've always wanted to learn how to sew. In fact, it's been such a long term desire that I can distinctly remember sitting myself down at six, determined to make a doll's dress... and I didn't even like dolls! Back in the day, I was way more of a stuffed animal kind of girl. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me paint the picture for you:  You remember getting that 'wild hair' as a kid and desperately wanting some random item you saw in the store? Yeah, that has to be everyone's childhood experience. It was the middle of summer, 2003, and I was in a Hobby Lobby with my mom and her mom (my Grammy) while she visited us after a big move states away. I don't remember very much about that Hobby Lobby trip other than that we were there to get decorations for my six year old birthday party with our new neighbors. But I vividly remember seeing her  : a completely blank, stuffed canvas doll form, about five inches long....

T his "middle ground" time of year between winter and spring can be one of the most fascinating and frustrating: it's so neat to watch the shadow of new life preparing to burst on the scene, and frustrating that it's not quite here yet. My mama has a term for that shadow of coming that I absolutely love: "the green veil." You can see the veil get greener as the trees' buds swell into leaves, the dead grass starts to give way to the new shoots peeking just above the surface, and as the crops take root in the newly-tilled fields.  That last part was a sight I didn't grow up with, but treasure more and more as I get older. We moved to a rural area from Surburbia, USA in the late spring of 2011, and missed the phenomenon by several weeks. Actually, we landed on the old family dairy farm smack in the middle of tornado season, surrounded by the bugs and stifling humidity of early May. If I remember correctly, the soybean crop across the highway was already...

       Wow. When I wrote "An Open Letter to 2021," and said that I had no idea what was going to happen on the 6th, I really  had no idea.  It's been exactly two weeks since that post, and it seems as though we're living in a completely different reality. A reality where, now more than ever,  right is wrong and  wrong is right. A reality where violence is "peace" and true peace is decried as "violence." A reality where the idea of liberty in all of its forms is more unpopular than a pariah. A reality where  countryman turns against countryman with an unparalleled ferocity. Except this time, it is accompanied with the heavy words "traitor" and "terrorist;" flung high into the ether like so much chaff. And these comments were aimed at almost all of the wrong people.  We've been sternly lectured by our "betters" and utterly betrayed by a large percentage of our elected "leaders." Our voice was unequivocally ...