Where I Come From...

 My 4th Birthday

I come from wild flower fence-rows and grass rural routes

From clover-sweet meadows and muddy barn-boots

I come from co’-boss calls and farm-life joys

From ‘I’m the 3^rd of ten children; five girls and five boys’

I come from Daily Bread mornings and evening prayer nights

From ‘listen to your parents’; ‘many-hands-make-work-light’

I come from itchy stockings and worn hand-me-downs

From everybody’s talking while the food’s passed around

I come from learning how to flute a pie-crust

From piled in the station-wagon ‘in God we trust’

I come from hard work and front-yard baseball

From a two-cookie rule or the cookies ‘is all’

I come from ‘Everyone needs to do their part’

From a hymn-singing mother with a gentle heart

I come from a Daddy who taught us of God

And whistled while he tilled both souls and sod

I came from God’s country; I was sure of that

As the rooster crowed early and the dog chased the cat

And the grain turned amber in the summer sun

As did care-free children in the pasture pond

I come from a quaint, two-room country school  

Eight grades of book-learning and the golden rule

Cartoons were pictures and words in the paper

And television was something we once saw at the neighbor

I come from sister-spats and singing four-part harmony

As we husked mountains of sweet-corn beneath the willow tree

Oh, I am who I am not by some fluke ho-hum

I am who I am because of where I come from

© Janet Martin

"What are sister-spats?", asks Victoria, my youngest daughter as we read the poem together. "Well", I said, "I guess it's like little fights".
"Oh Mom",she replied, aghast! "You fought with your sisters?! I didn't think you ever fought" ;-0

This is the time of year I always ask myself ‘How did my mother do it?!”  The four oldest in our family are celebrating our birthdays.

Oldest daughter, June 16 1964,

Oldest son, May 30,1965,

Next daughter(me) June 7 1966,

Next son, May 28, 1967,

after that 3 more daughters, then 3 sons!

While we grew up we were ‘the four oldest’, ‘the three little girls’ and ‘the three little boys’. I remember Mom saying my youngest brother had six mothers. This past Sunday I attended a 40 year school reunion. The two-room school is now a three-room school but wow, what a trip down memory lane.  Tonight while I was washing dishes and watching the rain fall suddenly ‘where I come from’ washed over me…

Life's Miles

   

 Image Source

Life has many glorious miles

Where winds are kind and sunshine smiles

Where grass is soft beneath our feet

And flowers bountiful and sweet

Life has many grueling miles

Of hurt and dirt and sorrow’s trials

Where fears and tears torment, bequeath

We chew the grit between our teeth

Life has many merry miles

Where mercy’s tender touch beguiles

Filling our mouths with melody

And happy hearts with charity

Life has many lonesome miles

Robbing the lips of laughing smiles

As twists and turns would make us fall

But God is faithful through them all

© Janet Martin

No Halls of Fame in Heaven

There are no halls of fame in Heaven

The ground is level at the cross

We employ the gifts He's given

None are greater than, or less

We serve, not for vain recognition

But with humble heart and soul

Knowing God knows our ambition

He can see the unmasked whole

There are no halls of fame in Heaven

Though the enemy suggests

To us that there might be a difference

God loves each of us the best

The inheritance of Heaven

Is for all who will believe

In the gift of God’s redemption

As His mercy we receive
 

Jesus died for every person

Each must strive for the reward

There are no halls of fame in Heaven

Where all glory is the Lord

© Janet Martin

Sometimes it's easy to look at someone else and think their service is more important, more honorable perhaps...

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8

...for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." Rom.10:13

The Prize

How soon we become distracted

By what impedes our view

To keep our eyes upon the Prize

Is not always easy to do

Lord, help us to be faithful

With love’s humility

And keep our eyes upon the Prize

In spite of what we see

Love never fails though often

We cannot understand

With earth-dimmed eyes we seek its Prize

Held in Love’s nail-scarred Hand

This world is torn and troubled

Yet we must journey on

Keeping our eyes upon the Prize

When life’s short race is run

Within this broken turmoil

Abides both hope and grace

Lifting our eyes toward the Prize

Beyond life’s little race

© Janet Martin

 

Knowledge and Wisdom

We may have knowledge

To cover the earth

But it’s what we do with it

That measures its worth

***

Knowledge on its own

Is not of much use

Knowledge without wisdom

Is like a tree without roots

***

One may absorb a world of knowledge

Yet be unprepared for the strife

Of living, for wisdom is not found in college

But in the lessons of life

***

Knowledge without wisdom

Is like a ship without a sail

Its hold is full of luggage

At the mercy of the gale

***

Knowledge is a hat

Wisdom is a crown

© Janet Martin

(I began this as a 'Thursday thoughts' post, but Thursday ran out of hours:)

The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding. Prov. 4:7

Scripture teaches us the importance of knowledge and wisdom and understanding.

Arabesque Avalanche

The flowers walk past me while I’m standing still

The moon climbs the stairs to its heavenly hill

The moments that held such mystery and appeal

Fall into the fairway of history’s seal

It seems to happen while I’m standing still

The babies that held me are taller than I

Someday perhaps they will teach me to fly

It happens so quickly, the ebb and the flow

Over, beneath me, holding, letting go

Now my babies are bigger and braver than I

Arabesque oceans of hours and years

Surging in memory over thought’s phantom piers

Am I standing still while Time rushes ahead?

For I see a lifetime unravel its thread

In shimmering laughter and tears

© Janet Martin

Remember twirling on a rope-swing, spinning, spinning, then stopping while the world continued to tilt and twirl...that's what it feels like sometimes; Life, twirling by while I feel myself in slow-motion, trying to take it all in!

 

Moments are like bubbles...as we catch them they disappear.

Wanderers...

 

We never know where we will wander

Over the misty morn

Or back to the days of childhood

Where memories are tarnished and worn

Together we traverse the rafters

Of midnight; the moon-garnished sea

Drinking the hope and the laughter

Of echoes or what yet might be

The pathway of thought and desire

Suffers no boundaries

We ruffle the hemlock spire

With longing’s languid melodies

Deeds are the dust that we reckon

Words are the letters we blend

But now silver-soft eons beckon

Where only a thought can transcend

We never know where we will wander

When Muse spills her enchanting font

Giving permission to squander

White whispers of wishes and want

Beyond blue horizons we ramble

Reaching for perception’s vague ken  

As thought and I freely amble

In search of a poem to pen

© Janet Martin

As Daylight Closes its Doors

Dandelion halos gleam pink in the dusk

As daylight closes its doors

The air heavy-laden with mist-silver musk

Wafting from shimmering shores

Over the meadowland drifts the sweet swell

In lyrics of vesper and lark

As God breathes a masterpiece of fond farewell

Beneath the soft-stilly dark

Somnolent beauty in sable surrender

Where does the twilight begin?

Over the landscape in deepening splendor

Somewhere the night settles in

Against the emerald indulgence of noontide

Somber tones snuff shades of day

Draping a shawl over slumbering country-side

Ebony, charcoal and gray

Into the archives of never-returning

Dawn’s darling diadem slips

Gone is its pithy allotment of yearning

Erased by God’s fingertips

Dandelion halos fade into oblivion

As daylight fades into the deep

And all we have left of its azure pavilion

Are love’s tender memories to keep

© Janet Martin

We are at the time of year when the sun sets at the end of the highway... one never can tell where the light stops and the dark begins; it moves in deepening, deepening but how, we cannot tell!