The Homestead

This past Sunday we traveled to Mulberry, Texas to go to my Great Aunt’s 80th Birthday party.  Mulberry is pretty much in the middle of nowhere and almost the entire population consists of my Pepaw’s relatives.  My Pepaw was one of 14 children who grew up during the depression and during the latter part of his childhood he was raised in Mulberry in a house that would be considered modest in today’s society.  Picture a two story wooden white house with a wrap around porch.  The inside looks like a typical house built in the early 1900’s where the wood floors squeak, each room pours into another, there is only one tiny bathroom and an open room upstairs that probably contained 5 or 6 double beds at the time.

What makes this house so special is that my Pepaw’s sisters have slowly renovated the house into a beautiful “bed and breakfast”.  I use quotations because I don’t think anyone other than family has ever spent the night there but it could be pictured in a Home and Garden magazine none the less.  Every year we travel to The Homestead for a family reunion and there is always some sort of  a family bonding activity whether it be a tea party for the children, hay rides with singing or planting new trees on the acreage, there is something so simple and serene about being there.  The trees are beautiful, the air smells clean, the crickets are chirping, birds are singing and mosquitoes are biting (I got brutally attacked by them).

It is so hard to imagine what it would be like growing up in the middle of nowhere and living with 15 other people with no central heat or air.  It is hard to imagine what it was like working from sun up till sun down and barely scraping by.  It is hard to imagine how 2 people raised that many kids that all turned out to be decent human beings, but they did it, and that is why we gather there year after year to celebrate our family tree.

We recently bought a Canon 50D camera and even though we barely know how to turn it on it takes such great pictures.  We were unable to get any good pictures of The Homestead due to about 100 people wondering around it, but we got some great family pics that we would like to share.

Honey and Lola

My sister Heather and nephew Jack

Sophia swinging

Sophia and Pepaw

Sophia and her Unckie Hunter

The only descent family pic of the day.

Heather, Hunter & Holly

Keith and Hunter being.....Keith and Hunter

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On another note, Keith and I leave for vacation this weekend.  Although I am so excited about getting away and traveling to a new place my anxieties are at their peak.  I can’t help but worry about our plane crashing, something happening to our kids while we are gone, Keith and I getting kidnapped etc.  It didn’t help that we had to revise our will last night and it asks you questions like “if you are in a coma, how long do you want your loved ones to wait to pull the plug?”  I don’t want to think about stuff like that, I want to live to be 100 and then die peacefully in my sleep.

Because everyone close to me (and all of my loving clients) know all about my anxiety problems, they all offer up what they think are helpful solutions to my problem.  Everything they say makes perfect sense but nothing has ever hit home with me until a client said this to me last week, “God does not give you a spirit of fear.  If He wants you to trust completely in Him then who is giving you this spirit of fear?  The enemy.”  Why something so simple all of the sudden made my light bulb go off I do not know.  Actually I do know, God is trying to tell me something.  We are supposed to trust in Him, we are supposed listen to Him, we are supposed to have a peace that we are not in control of anything and He is in control of everything.  We can try our entire lives to control our lives and control our future, but it is ultimately all in His hands.

I know that I am still going to worry about things and have anxiety attacks here and there, but I also know that God has a plan for me and that I may live to be 100, or I may not live another hour, but either way I need to stop determining my own paths and just walk along His.

My next post will be pictures of our vacation!  Say a little prayer for our safety and my Mom’s sanity while she tries to manage our two hooligans.

Peace Out.