{Left} My little sister Sara and I with our horse Smokey. {Right} A tisket, a tasket, I have puppies in a basket.
Welcome!
When I remember my growing up years I picture Oklahoma prairie skies.
They go on forever and at my childhood country home, there were endless possibilities of play underneath them. Picnics in pastures, swimming in creeks (or my cousin’s up-the-road pool), fort-building in woods, house-playing in brick piles. With sisters and cousins or just by myself, I did plenty of dreaming and scheming while looking skyward.
Now I’m a Mama of 3 precious young’uns who has lived in Ohio, New Mexico, Hawaii and Colorado as I follow my Air Force man around this country. The blue skies may change with the landscape, but the fresh-air hope I find in looking up does not.
Why Chasing Blue Skies? Because blue skies represent joy and I am always on a chase for joy. Not in a Pollyanna, everything-is-sunshiney-wonderful kind of way. Everything is most assuredly not sunshiney. Life is good. But dang it, life is hard. More accurately I am talking about chasing down the good in every circumstance, seeing how God is present in the good, bad and ugly.
Why the Country Girl? Because that’s what I am. No, I’ve never roped anything or worn Wranglers. But ask anyone who’s known me for 5 minutes if I have an accent, even if I haven’t lived near the South in 15 years. I was the only gal living in Hawaii that said, “Y’all” or used expressions like, “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” But it’s not just southern accents or cultural euphemisms that make me a country girl. In the country, life moves slow and relaxed. It offers room to spread out your arms like Maria from The Sound of Music and swing around in circles or sing at the top of your lungs or run free. Or all of the above. You can breathe deep the good smells as you relish being exactly who God created you to be.
Even as a current city dweller, I carry this in my heart. You can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.
I hope you find this space one where you can be yourself as you soak up fresh-air encouragement. If you really keep readin’, you’ll see I’ll be keepin’ it real.
His work in progress,
