It's a beautiful thing a wedding. It is this promise, this belief that life is worth the commitment of love. It is a happy and joyous day that warms our hearts. Country weddings are especially beautiful to me, as they are usually simple and heartfelt and warm.

Today two friends of ours John and Tama, married their best friend. In the little white church after the 2nd service. The Pastor who blesses me so much, brought it home by sharing this at the end "Then when life is done and the sun is setting, may they be found then as now, still hand in hand, still very proud, thanking God so much for each other."

The women in the packed church were patting their eyes, the men blinking in rapid sucession. A baby hollered "YEA!" and it was so! Yea!

Yea to the promise, yea to the future, yea to the joy of finding such grace.

My husband reached out and bridged the distance between us since a morning of short directives and indifference. Not alot of grace was found in our little pocket of "Happily ever after" both of us tired and stressed from our pressing on the potters wheel  within the confines of our marriage. Job, health, finances and a bad neighbor. We had sat in the church earlier a distance apart in our hearts until the reminder of Gods promise to us and the hope of the Pastors final words "May they be found hand in hand, thanking God for each other."

I turned and looked into his eyes and found his soul and I thanked God that I had someone by my side after all these years who knows me and still takes my hand. It's called grace and it is what holds us together. (Picture is of my husband and I renewing our vows on the farm in 2011)

I could begin by saying that I used to be a BIG, adventurous eater. I ate foods from greasy diners and Mexico was my home away from home. I lived and played amongst Desebuqui Indians who ate dogs. (Got ya! No I didn't eat the poor things, I played the pied piper with fish and lured them all out of the village, but that's another story). I ate in Germany and drank so much beer once I sloshed when I walked. (Maybe I swooshed...anyway I sang "Singing in the rain" while I waddled with pain.) I ate shrimp, lobster, okra (Yuck), duck, cornish hens and so many kinds of corn I could've popped. I never weighed a pound over 100 until I went to college and lived in a dorm. I feasted on anemic lettuce and cake by the pound. From double fisting M&M's and corn nuts to omelets with cheese, I grazed my way through life without a thought as to what went into my mouth. Food was glorious and I was molded and shaped by my dancing, the gym and the pool. Then in the summer of my 24th year of life I was blissfully minding my own business and was literally doused with a pesticide that was being applied by workers, in white protective suits, as they sprayed a large tree on the other side of a hill I happened to be riding on. On my bare legs and in my open mouth, I took a full hit of the poisons and my world shifted into a lifelong fight with my beautiful body. Overnight I lost all ability to eat normally. I was hospitalized for almost a year. I entered into this bizarre world of "poison" and the healthy, strong eater became an 80 pound emaciated girl. But I am a fighter and out of the ashes of this horrendous lesson I began to emerge a stronger spirit. Out of the poisoning came "Organic girl!" This shift in my life changed completely the terraine of my eating. I found a place I call the garden of happy endings. When your so sick you can't swallow you have to find other means of supporting life. Enter the world of liquid proteins. I drank shakes with organic berries and whey proteins and I ate huge sweet potaotes right out of the garden. My world narrowed to green drinks and dried, organic fruits and raw nuts. I learned about tofu (which at first made me wrinkle my nose, but now is one of my favorite dishes), scrambled with vegetables and sea salt. I am no longer a BIG fan of eating. I became an eat to live girl, not the live to eat gir,l that I once was. My idea of a big date with food is a rice cake with butter or organic cheese. (I know right?) I share all of this because the world is food obsessed. I once had a man whom I had been dating say he could never marry me because his family was all about the food...Yea ok, I realize now that he was not the one for me, (did I mention he gave me a tire for my birthday?,) but the fundamental issue was his food obsessed world did not match mine.

I am obsessed with problems of global warming and Monsanto being given so much power over our food supplies. Our beautiful ecosystem is failing with the GMO seeds and foods that Monsanto and our goverment, (in greedy beds together), peddle to consumers. The death of GOD given food production begins when you inject a seed with a pesticide that will kill much of the fragile ecosystem called "Life". Our precious honey bees and the birds that bring so much joy in song are dying at alarming rates. So I am searching once again for the answer to the problem of foods that will heal, not hurt us. I am back in the garden. You know, the garden of happy endings, where "organic girl" lives. I realized that you can garden and grow your own beautiful healthy food in pots on your deck, or acres on your farm, or rows in your green house. I am learning the art of composting and the natural way to kill a bug. It's cool because I think it's the answer to life, to keep things simple and not use the cancer causing chemicals to do the 'lazy' gardening ways. Nope, give me a morning on my knees pulling out weeds and watching beautiful, tiny villages of creatures and bugs (ladybugs, praying mantis and butterflies to name a few) do what they have done for thousands of years, control the population of bad bugs and pollinate flowers. Let me watch the dance of bees who will bring their hard work back to their hive and make Gods nectar "honey." It's a simple, beautiful dance and it keeps me happy and healthier than I could ever be eating the easy American, fast food way. So as the garden slowly beckons me again, I share my thoughts of making peace with a junk obsessed world and I suggest you keep it simple. Eat to live, eat to nourish and to heal. Find your spirit grow light and find your garden of happy endings. Plant to nourish the bees and give them a chance to survive by NEVER spraying a chemical in your yard. Think about affirming life and being a guardian of the gardens of grace. You'll be amazed at the joy when you see the bees dance. It's remarkably sweet really.

When I married my dear cowboy I was living in a downtown penthouse. He lived out on the Eastern plains. He came from a blue collar family and I came from a white collar family. We met and married in a whirlwind of 8 days. That was 18 years ago and it has been a wild ride!

If there were ever two people more different in their ways it would be us. When we first married, we moved south of Pueblo, Colorado at the base of the Greenhorn Mountains, built a home from the land and named it the 'JLB Ranch'. Our neighbor, Roy, was an old cowboy who spotted a greenhorn (me) and proceeded to welcome me to the neighborhood by bringing me a dead rattlesnack in a bucket. (Yea that's right) I was the laughing stock of the neighbors for quite awhile until I took two of Roys sick calves and tried one winter to save their poor little lives. It was colder than... well there is that expression, which if you don't know what it is let us just leave it at that and move on. I would drive up with my cowboy and sit in the freezing barn and bottle feed the calves. (If it had been up to me they would have been inside the house.) I sat on the hay bale with one of them in front of me and pretended to be "mama". I grew to love that little critter and Roy grew to grudgingly respect me. When that calf died I cried so hard that I thought my heart had broken and Roy was softer in the handling of me after that. Still, I was living in the middle of "Nowhere" (actually the road was called Last car,) so that gives you an idea of where we were. My cowboy worked a hundred miles away and I wandered the property in my fur coat and my pointy boots until I saw a rerun of Green Acres. I realized that I was (Dear God) that Gabor woman and so I hung the coat in the closet and later donated it. I started researching cowgirls and country duds, and the attitudes of the neighbors began to rub off on me a bit. I could haul water into a cistern and bridle a horse. I stood fascinated as a 5 mile long swarm of bees went making their way across the property and into the valley. I saw a blonde bear at the end of the driveway and I wanted to take its picture, Yea I know, fearless. I stopped painting my fingernails and only polished my toes and then, only in summer. We threw a big party one weekend for my city friends and they commented how much I had changed. I was changing, and sometimes I embraced the change and sometimes I fought it with every city cell in me. My husband became a more well rounded person as well. When my family took him to the theatre for the first time in his life, he told me he thought he would hate it, but he loved it. He listens to classical music with me now and even seems to appreciate it. He will let me give him a facial on occasion and I will muck a stall now and clean a chicken coop without saying things like "ewww." Yea, we are becoming a melting pot of the best of the both of us and that gives me joy.

 Now we live closer to the city and a drive into town only takes a half hour. We are known to once a year go to the symphony or the theatre. Most nights we are home on our little farm, hanging in the garden or brushing the horses. My clothes are mostly jeans and boots and I couldn't wear a high heel if you paid me. I have one pair, never worn, in a box on the top shelf that stares down at me from time to time, as if to say "Give me to someone who appreciates me, TRAITOR!"   I think when I am done here I am going to pull that box down and take one last look at the life I have left behnd, because I am a country girl now and shoes like that belong to some poor girl in the city who doesn't have a clue.  The Goodwill store and teetering hearts on heels will be happy tomorrow.

 Happy trails to you sweetheart,because these feet were meant for boots of another kind.