Just Write {130}

This post was originally freely written about 6 years ago. I edited it for the now that I live in, but very little. It seems my heart is still there:

I want a cottage style house built by my Dad somewhere near water and so many acres of nothing but grass and dirt and trees. I want salvaged barn doors in that cottage somewhere, to pull to the side, heavy and creaking. I want built-in book shelves filled with colorful stacks and rows of books.  I want vintage things all around, from years ago and grandparents. I want a really big garden full of fruits, veggies, herbs and flowers. I want a cozy space for guests to stay and kids to play above the garage. I want all of that, and yet I still want the house to be small, holding us close together so there’s nowhere we can go to end up feeling like we don’t belong.

I want so many chickens. I miss my chickens.

I want a swing on a wrap-around porch not too far from the rocking chairs. I want to look through the window while I sit with my love and swing and rest. I want to see an office through the window, one with those built-in shelves full of books and french doors that lead to an entry where the staircase climbs high and is littered with family photos. I want to write in that office while the breeze comes through the window. I want to look out the window to see my kids run far and fast but where I can still see them, and then I want to watch them play for hours with nothing but sticks and rocks and water and dirt and each other.

I want to go home. Through a swinging screen door, I want to go home. I want my kids to love living, fully alive with joy in simple things, and to love people unconditionally. I want them to learn to help the world around them because they see their parents doing that. I want to make them big meals and laugh with them around the table while the chairs scrape the wood floors. I want to go to church on Sunday and then spend the afternoon with Nanny and Bapa, feeding the horses and smelling the flowers. I want to run into old friends in the grocery store, and then I want to stand in the aisle talking until the frozen things in my cart start to melt. I want to grow our family there in more than one way, in the country and the small house in the country.

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There’s nothing wrong with dreaming and hoping for a thousand different things. The renewed health of a loved one. The reconciling of a relationship. The love of a father, or mother, or husband or wife. The happiness of children. The success of a friend. There’s even nothing wrong with the wanting of things, things that make your heart happy with their beauty and light, like a cottage house in the country.

More than anything else I could want, I’d like to truly be content with exactly how things are in this very moment, even in the times when everything is so difficult and painful, but holds hope somehow. I can always continue to want and to dream, I just simply hope to do it with a peaceful and patient heart.

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This is the 128th installment of Just Write, an exercise in free writing your ordinary and extraordinary moments. {Please see the details here.} I would love to read your freely written words so join me and link up below. You can add the URL of your post at any time. Just be sure it’s a link to your Just Write post, not to your main page, and please don’t link to posts that are not freely written in the spirit of capturing moments–you know, don’t link to how-to posts, lists or sponsored posts. Also, please link back to this post in yours so people know where to go if they’d like to join in.