deconstructed fences

{via pinterest}

i encountered adventurers yesterday. 

they weren't thrill-seekers with their parachutes or wooden walking sticks. they didn't seek to change the world with fists held high or picketing signs up and down the sidewalk.

they just wanted to be free. past the fence and into the world to see what they had never known, but had long gazed upon from so far away.

did i mention that they weren't even human, 

but equine?

two of them, huge and dark brown with eyes like deep pools of melted chocolate, if chocolate bore intelligence and perhaps it does, actually.

and somehow, they had broken through their hill-top paddock fence and made their way down into the middle of the winding country road. 

but that was as far as they went. the world was so big around them, so expansive and beautiful with grass and hills and rolling fields. but they stayed there, on the pavement, barely a hundred feet from their original enclosure.

they were free, but they did not choose to act in freedom. 

{via pinterest}

they were still caged. 

do i do this? 

do i still live caged when in truth i am surrounded on all sides by open fields of Love and Grace and Mercy and Truth and oh, so much Light? 

do i chose to cower in the darkness right next to the broken Death-fence, whispering

but i know this. i know here. i know now. 

i don't know anything else. 

but i have freedom.

for all those who have dwelt in darkness have seen a Great Light. 

because He used the nail and hammer to tear down fences, and the wooden beams to deconstruct the cages of fear and death. He tore curtains from top to bottom, death working backwards. 

i need to grasp, and inhale and exhale and inhale again

and run free. 

countryside

It is only in the country that we can get to know a person or a book.  ~Cyril Connolly

i grew up on a farm.

or rather, i can't remember any part of my childhood life outside of my parents' countryside home.

i grew up in silence. in serenity. with nature. with animals.

surrounded by nothing but beauty, no matter the season. 

no traffic sounds or honking horns.open fields and white fences. slopping hills and soft green grass.

little kittycat mews and snuffling equine neighs. metal grate fences and gravel-dirt paths. the mooing of cows and the echoing cry of a faraway night train.

barefoot in the backyard

daisies in my hair

i always thought i was a city girl. my teenage self envied the town life that my friends told me about, being surrounded by friends and walking to get ice cream or see a movie. 

i hated the country. i wanted a city lifestyle. and when i grew up and said i do, town life became my life. barely a ten minute drive from my childhood home, but oh, so very different.

no more cows or corn fields. now i have traffic under my window, and streetlights on every corner. 

but i know better now.

now i look for occasions to take my husband

also a country boy

and go back home.

to spend hours under my favourite old maple tree in the backyard, curled up with a book and one of my feline companions. 

apple cider and a knitted blanket around a smokey-warm fire in the charcoal pit with my family. 

with autumn coming close, i anticipate those upcoming golden-toned afternoons more than anything else. 

and then comes silver-sprinkled winters that conjure ideas of candy canes and steamy mochas by the fireplace. but that's another post for a later day. 

i may live in town now, perhaps even with the rest of my life. and i love my cozy apartment, and my town-life with my husband...please don't mistake me for even a moment. 

but the country holds my heart.