I also recently read a stunningly simple blog post by Ashleigh Baker that was a beautiful summary of my own mish-mash thoughts after the 2:1 Conference.

And this is what comes to my mind…

We all need to be careful, readers and writers alike, what authority we speak with and recognize in our lives, and understand the difference between the stories of our peers and authentic wisdom. As everything else, it requires balance–which I find is only achieved by prayer with an open mind and heart–and which is often proved out in my own life by the bitter fruit produced by chasing after the exact opposite! {smile}

Having a community of supportive peers, women walking by my side through motherhood and marriage, lifting me up and urging me on, has been one of the greatest blessings for me from blogging and social media! But I also find that the Lord has been working on my heart about being more discerning in this area. Urging me to realize that my peers may share their story, but not necessarily wisdom as He would have me seek. That there is a perspective that is only gain through trial and experience, that truly is determined by longevity.

My peers, my beloved friends, are walking this road with me. But sometimes we need to find the women who are walking ahead of us!

I’ve been married for 11 years (12 this December!) and a mother for 9 years this summer.  And sometimes it seems I look around and we’ve been married and parenting longer than everyone in our age group. There’s a blank spot in our circle representing 15-20 year marriages and most of our acquaintances that are that 5-10 years further down the road parenting-wise, do not have an equally mature marriage.

Sometimes I need to be seeking out women that have been married 20 years, 30 years…have children in high school, or college, or are experienced grandmas who have seen their children through adulthood. Ladies who have proven, through the example of their solid marriage or their faithful adult children, that they already know how to walk the path I desire to take.

I think there’s a couple challenges here.

One is a generation gap related to using technology. Let’s be honest, most grandma’s are not blogging.

A second is replacing our real life church family with a virtual community. The more I reach out to the godly women in our church family, the more they fill that empty spot with their experience and wisdom. And encouragement–oh how sweet is the encouragement from someone who’s been married 35 years and raised 3 beautiful, God-fearing children and says “Sweetheart, you’re doing just fine!”

Since the Titus 2:1 Conference, I have felt the Lord calling me to greater humility. There is a difference between sharing stories, sharing information, and sharing wisdom. In this space, here at Walking in High Cotton, I share stories. I share experiences. I share ideas. And each reader has to use their own discernment as to whether it speaks wisdom into your life.

But I also feel like the Lord is speaking to me about seeking…seeking out more mature fellowships. Seeking out relationships–not to replace!–but to balance the good friendships I’ve made within my peer group since I’ve been blogging. Cultivating relationships and discovering godly resources that mentor to me where I am in this life.

I’m not sure if that means through more blogging, or less, or not.

But I do know that a seeking heart will be rewarded with wisdom and knowledge.

Do you find the on-line environment to be more heavily weighed toward youth and inexperience rather than experience and godly wisdom?  Do you ever find yourself suddenly questioning someone’s authority/confidence on certain topics after you read their About page?

Our pasture bluebird houses are all full of growing families!

Then on Saturday I went out to run errands which the crew and we got to spend a few hours at the bookstore. Oh the drama of the bookstore! {smile} We like to occasionally take them out to the bookstore to spend some of the gift money they have and as a reward for good school efforts. Their little banks were filling up again and we’re in the last week of school, so I took them to pick out a couple books for their summer reading. Besides, I had a couple member coupons for Mother’s Day.

The sales clerk was getting such a kick out of their three little voices echoing back and forth across the children’s section, “Momma, is this in my price range?!” He said, “They have a price range? That is so cute!” I said “Yes, their budget is half our money and half theirs. It helps them appreciate the books more at home.” Hopefully, anyway.

I don’t think of it as “cute.” I like to think of it as teaching responsible stewardship. But maybe it planted a little seed for when that young man has a family. We came home with a copy of Shiloh, Lego Kingdom, Lego Ninja, Face-to-Face with Frogs, the Great Migration, the Burning Bridge, and Brotherband Chronicles #1.

Sometimes we think of “grass” as just grass. But it’s not. It’s full of flowers, and clover and colors.

The kiddos are going to be home again with a babysitter this summer (although we’re all a little bummed that it won’t be “Ms. Maya” again) and we’re looking forward to redeeming a few extra hours each day with them. We’ve also printed out copies of the Barnes and Noble Summer Reading Journal and the Ladybug has her eye on a free copy of Tuesdays at the Castle and The Tale of Emily Windsnap, so she’ll be quite busy.

Purple and spiky!

And then it was Mother’s Day.

And Mr. Fix-It walked on eggshells.

And honestly, so did I.

Because sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to be a mother, for Mother’s Day, or if I’m going to be a motherless daughter, for Mother’s Day. The pain doesn’t lay itself out in advance and let me prepare…I don’t see it coming and have a chance to run and hide, or give Mr. Fix-It a signal to batten down the hatches…sometimes it’s just there.

But this year I was just a mother, on Mother’s Day.

Soft and round and yellow!

And I got marigolds in a red solo cup for my garden. And a hand-drawn picture of me holding hands with the Cowboy. And a cookie sheet turned magnet board covered in goldfish from my Speedracer.

And Mr. Fix-It helped me trim the rose bushes, and my irises are blooming, and my allergies have gone crazy, and we’re building a new pen for the ducklings, and we have a new grill again (after nearly 2 years!)…and I was just a momma.

Just a momma, on Mother’s Day.

And it was good.

And green, and white, and purple, and more yellow, and just a speck of pink!

And I thought how sometimes, when you look over the whole field, you just see grass. But when you walk through it, day-by-day, you learn to see the flowers. And if you didn’t walk through it each day, you’d never see the purple and the yellow and the tiny spots of pink…

And I thought about how “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

And about how, if you don’t love God, and you aren’t following His calling and His purpose, those words aren’t your promise. Everything is for good, only if you’re allowing God fully into your life. It’s not an absolute, it’s a promise based on your choice.

This year I was just a momma on Mother’s Day…because all things work together for my good, because I choose the Lord.

How was your Mother’s Day?

Actually, what he said was, “Tiberius is out and coming around the field. Can you get dressed–I need you outside.” So I threw jeans and a tee-shirt on over my pink nightgown and hollered for Speedracer to grab my muck boots and charged outside–into the sopping wet grass.

And I do mean sopping. I was wet to the knees from the tall grass within minutes.

I saw the cows, looking a little confused by my frazzled haste.

I also didn’t see any sign of our big, dumb, ram galloping blindly around the field as he is known to do whenever he’s foolish enough to get out.

Now, I hate to call any animal stupid. I prefer things like “driven by instinct” or “just being how God made them.” But when it comes to Tiberius, there it is.  That sheep is a few eggs shy of a dozen, folks. And that’s being generous. He’s big, and beautiful, and throws good lambs on our ewes…but I’ve seen earthworms act more intelligent. (Oh, how I miss our ram, Ozzie!)

The spring calves are really growing, aren’t they?!

Anyway, I didn’t see any sign of him galloping around crashing into things, leaping clover patches, and falling into ditches. I just saw one, lone, crying, lamb looking lost and confused and headed in the wrong direction. Mr. Fix-It hopped on the tractor and headed out to cut off the long-way-around-side and I hustled through the backyard and cut off the short side.

I turned him around and Mr. Fix-It and I converged on the little guy…

He squeezed back under the gate he’d come out of and everything was fine. Mr. Fix-It added a little extra security (we’re still not sure how Tiberius managed to get his 220 lbs of brawn-not-brains out and then back in again) while I looked everyone over.

And what did I see?

A ewe, off by herself in the field…

All our readers know that a sheep by itself is a sheep that has a problem!

It turns out that we thought we were done lambing and we weren’t!

We had one Clun ewe that was sick and struggled badly with worms over the summer. She barely put any weight on over the winter and we were just glad she survived. We assumed that with the high doses of medicine over the summer she either would not breed or would lose the lambs early. Her lack of size seemed to confirm that she wasn’t carrying lambs.

I can’t wait until we shear–their wool gets so raggedy-looking in the wet spring weather!

She started putting on weight like everyone else when the fresh grass started coming in and we thought she had finally made a turn for the better.

Turns out, all this time she was carrying twins!!

They are very small. We’re worried about whether they are going to be completely healthy, or if the medicine from last summer will have affected them. But so far they are ok and their momma seems to be handling everything fine.

I pray that they’ll both grow up normal, but I’m very happy that she seems like she’s going to make a full recovery. She’s a very valuable ewe and we’ve been worried about her most of the winter. We had even added extra feed pans to the winter field to reduce the pushing and shoving at feeding time to make sure she could get her share. (We don’t like to completely separate an animal from the flock if not absolutely necessary because it’s so unnatural to them that they tend to fret themselves more than heal.)

These two bring our count for the year up to 20!

I’m usually not a fan of lambing out in the big pastures because it’s harder to keep track of everyone. But in this case, I’m very glad that she lambed after the grass was in. There’s just no dietary substitute for fresh green grass. It’s what God made sheep to eat! It will be absolutely the best thing for her, health-wise, right now.

I’ll keep ya posted on how it goes!

How is your weekend shaping up?

See where I’m sharing…