We are almost all packed up for our night at the hotel. We have talked about a night out for many months. In our ideal plan, however, it was a romantic escape involving my husband and I instead of a whole family trek to rented rooms on base for showers and laundry.  As it turns out the pump we replaced in the well pit was defective and we woke up to no water on Saturday. While we thought we had it fixed, it is now completely shot.  So, we have filled our stock barrel at a neighbor’s for the animals and will head into town shortly.

It’s funny because I have had several random thoughts the past couple weeks and this recent catastrophe solidified my hunch. A speaker I heard recently asserted that we must be "hard on ourselves and our children" in order to develop heroic virtue. Now I am as sold on heroic virtue as the next guy, but it seems to me our life provides more than enough opportunity to cultivate it without going out of our way to make things harder.

Some examples from just today – although Allen is more than willing to just pay someone to come do the work this time it is summer.  The well folks are booked several weeks out.  They gave us lots of constructive advice to run with and wished us well (no pun intended ; ) but noone is coming. At first I thought this was a farm "thing".  Then we discovered the only room open on base has a broken air conditioner. All this follows our dear mama cat’s mysterious death the other morning. She was awake nursing her babies when we began barn chores.  When we went back to her to get the hay she was lying there, gone already. A very hard morning for my girls. When it rains it pours. Let’s just say we have our figurative umbrellas open.

Someone said to me the other day that I must be a STRONG person. I would change the emphasis to read that I MUST be a strong person. We all must.  There is no easy button in life and in a family this size with a property this size the rewards are multiplied, and so are the sorrows. It is inevitable. How we respond is about all we get to decide some days. I have noticed that if I remain as kind and patient as I can muster then the tone is set and the children react in kind.  If I give in to the selfish impulse to answer them sharply, then they in turn become careless in their words to each other and before you know it we have hurt feelings and angry words compounding the problems at hand. I know this all too well since I have not consistently resisted the fatigue and frustration that accompany early pregnancy coupled with a few well placed disasters. But that is what apologies are for, right?

No, we definitely don’t live a charmed life in an ideal world.  But, we have something better – real life.  While it’s often lacking in creature comforts and little luxuries that would be delightful to have on days like these, it IS fully equipped with all the necessities to help us on our path to heaven should we choose to take advantage of them. Opportunities for heroic virtue just bustin’ at the seams. <g>