Day 8 of 21

The morning light seeps through the small, dusty windows of the little old barn as we pick up the blue bucket that the girls fill with hay.  I breathe deeply.  The pop of the lid of the metal trash can - like opening a canister of coffee, the sound prepares you for the aroma that is about to fill your senses – only this time the coffee tin is filled with cow feed.  The bale of hay, cow feed, and a little old barn…can you picture it?  Can you breathe in the smells?  I didn’t know how much I would enjoy the whole experience of caring for the cow (Mrs. Rude – who we’ve affectionately renamed Mrs. Princess Beverly Rude) but it’s one I look forward to every day.  Thank You for her – she has many lessons to teach me…more on that another time!

After leaving the bovine to her meal, we meandered back to the kitchen and carried our oats out to the patio.  A table with four chairs and an umbrella awaits me, along with a view of hundreds of azalea bushes that are twice my height bursting with various shades of pinks, purples, and whites, and a breeze that is cool but not cold that carries with it a captivating scent.  Until my stay at the Ranch, I could only look forward to – even long for – this smell on our visits to western North Carolina.  To me it is a bit of the new Heavens breaking into here and now – it’s sweet and earthy, fresh and full of hope and life.  If I could bottle it, I would certainly be addicted!  Thankfully, my lust can’t capture this scent, but those deep desires are captured by it.  What’s more is that this scent evokes wonderful childhood memories of being at Laurel Ridge summer camp where God was real to me.  It was in that week each summer from 7-18 that my heart knew there was a God; I just thought that He stayed up on that mountain.  When I was 18, I finally found that His love for me drove Him to stay on only one mount.  And that same love drew me to the mountain each summer and searched for me throughout the years until I found that it was He that was the sweetest scent that I could ever drink in.  In His sweet kindness, it is that fragrant scent on the breeze – once only found on a North Carolina mountain top - that draws me to Him now. 

Thank You for mountains and breezes, for fields and flowers, for little girls with buckets too big and slobbery cows, for searching and finding, for never giving up. 

Peace,

Kristie