MNR Custom LLC

Hillsong United - There Is Nothing Like...

Friends

The thing about friends is that you want to be with them. At the least, they are fun to be around. At the most, they are family. The best people we know on our planet.
My friends are gracious, kind, supportive, understanding, funny, smart, kind, warm, generous, and loving.

Realistically, they are probably just like the rest of humanity; weak, short-tempered, annoying, petty, selfish, and the like. But I don't see it. I just don't see it.
I do see glimpses of people with complex stories and wounds. I see God-given strengths that sometimes are taken to the extreme and become a little unbalanced. But these small things are overshadowed by all the other gifts they have.

What does all of this mean? It means I am blessed. I have a good extended family. Really good. I have a small family- husband, four daughters, two (almost three) sons-in-laws, and two grandsons who are the apples of my eye. I have friends who love me and I love them. I have dear, close friends who are as precious as my family. What a rich, rich life.

What's for breakfast?

Some days all you need is coffee with honey and milk and a piece of lightly browned toast. But, the toast should have a good amount of real butter spread fairly evenly to all four corners. Maybe the honey in the coffee is enough sweetness for that particular day so the saltiness of the butter and the crunchy tenderness of the toast is fine.

Some mornings butter and honey is needed, depending on how many sweets you had the day before. There's just something about how the melted butter and the honey make just the right moistness-to-toast-crunchiness ratio.

Once in a while the day calls for a hearty jam. Not jelly, which is pretty much just sugary fruit juice that is thick enough to set up. No, it should to be jam with real chunks of apricot, whole blueberries, or bits of strawberries. It's the tangy flavor that makes the difference. Not sour. Not sweet. Tangy.

There are days when you need the protein of an egg plus the salt and pepper that go with it. There are waffle and pancake days too. But the best kind of mornings are the just-coffee-and-toast days.

Dancing

Have you ever seen a toddler dance? They bend their knees almost in time with the music. The cuteness factor is pretty much off the charts. But when you think about it, it's astonishing how the urge to dance is engrained into the youngest of our kind. Why is that?

There's something about a catchy bass line or a strong beat. Is it akin to a strong steady heartbeat? Is it a reminder of the strength of a loving father's heart or the sound of our mother's heart when we spent months in the womb?

Is it like a call to attention such as war drums or the march of the drum and fife? Is it a reminder of our instinctive desire for a passionate life and intense joy? Whatever it is, if most of us have a chance and the freedom to be uninhibited for a few minutes, we'll begin to tap our feet. Then we might clap our hands. That might, just might, lead to a burst of actually bending some limbs, swaying to the rhythm, or bobbing our heads.

What would it be like to have the joy and the mental freedom to dance like a toddler dances when the music hits us just right? What if we threw back our heads, threw out our arms, and twirled like preschool children? Would we be more joyful in general if we let ourselves experience joy in that way?

What if we began at home, alone? What if found the lyrics to our favorite songs and belted them out as loud as we wanted to and didn't worry about how it sounds? I guess we could start there. When did we decide that we need to dance and sing like professionals to do those things? Wouldn't it be fun to begin again?

The Vessel

It's a plain Jane 2007 Toyota Corolla. All it has is air-conditioning and a CD player. It even has window cranks. The driver side front door doesn't "catch" anymore so you'd better hold onto it when opening or the car next to you will feel it. And I love it. It's just small enough to feel like you're zooming in and out of traffic on an important mission instead of doing errands around town. It's the first car that I've bought that's not a conservative color. It's a nice warm red. Not candy-apple high school red, just red.

My husband and I have taken it on mini-adventures all around New England. It's been to New York state multiple times. It's been to Minnesota (24 hours away from our home) about four times now. And it's been all over Vermont and New Hampshire for years.

I think it's my favorite car since we've been married which has been just a tad over thirty years. It's sturdy, reliable, and simple. It fits well.

I can see taking it north to Canada to explore the beauty of that generous country. I can also see taking it southwest to the beaches in Mexico. Either one would be fine with me.

Even though it's a friendly, happy little car, I would leave it home for a chance to spend a summer driving around Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, or France. I would take lots of pictures of the countryside and the regular people who live in these places. I would love to sit and drink tea or coffee and nibble whatever kind of bread or scone or biscuit that was offered and listen to the people talk to one another. My traveling journal would continually be in my hand, I think. I would long for a greater vocabulary to describe the richness and beauty of the people and countries.

I think it would make me long for heaven. There are moments, tastes of blissful longing when I see a picture of open fields and golden summer light. The perfectness of a landscape with the summer sounds of grasshoppers, crickets, or cicadas squeeze my heart inside my chest with a longing so intense that the tears prick my eyes with a fierce, "if only." Truly, truly creation reflects it's Maker. Beautiful, grand, unexplainable, perfection. Some day.

It would be fun to drive a small European car. To try to get the feel of it as we explore the back roads and whatever comes along. Which countries drive on the left side of the road? That would take me awhile to get used to. In fact, there would probably be a couple of near head-on collisions as my mind (and the car) drifted from the present to the other ideas that pop into my head continually.

Still, I am content with my Corolla and the little previews of heaven here in the slice of the world called New England. For now.

Unrequited love poem

You give me hope
In your glances my way
You catch my eye
When you walk this way

Act like nuzzling
Is the on your mind
Then dart from the couch
Fickleness most unkind

Watering you faithfully
Feeding you tastefully
Most times for nought
Surely I won't stop

My motives mixed
Love that you're fixed
Feline actions better
Than the care and fetter

Of a dog

Weather Outside the Window

365 days of Creative Writing Day 1
Highland Garden

I wish I could remember the names of clouds. I would be able to list the names and that would be that. I see white and gray low-hanging poofy clouds slowly moving to the south. But in the foreground, I see seven foot tall Mexican sunflowers standing in our front yard garden. Right in front of them are dark and light pink and white cosmos just a few feet shorter than the sunflowers. A dozen tomato plants pepper the area. Four of them were purposefully planted, but the rest were "volunteers" as my farmer grandmother used to say. (Not being vigilant about harvesting tomatoes last year we let some stay where they lay until it was time to rotatill the next spring.)

The delicate-looking California poppies barely made it. Our plants need to be hearty to stay alive most years. They are beautifully shaded white, seventies smiley face yellow, and pink. Their petals are usually tentatively closed, but velvety and pretty.

The multi-colored bachelor buttons have long since passed. They were the first bloomers this spring. The earliest were volunteers from last year's bunch, but other periwinkle, dusty pink, and purple buttons came from the seeds I planted this year.

The potted red flowers eventually came back after a few days of setting the frog sprinkler in the midst of the tomato plants. (I've forgotten what type of flowers they are and I rarely get red ones, but the they look so pretty in the olive ornamental planter I dragged over from the backyard cement pool deck.

I guess this was a summer for trying new things. Not many flowers for the backyard and a bigger variety of flowers and vegetables for the front yard.

Satisfaction and a comfortable calmness comes over me when I look or work in our weedy patch of wilderness. If I would just remember to water it more often and pick the vegetables before they expire, it would be even better. Next year.