Foundations....

My brother and I recently made a trip back to our childhood home .  We come from a small ranch in the middle of South Dakota.  Our father's heritage was deeply rooted in the founding of a town in North Dakota.  This time, we made a trek through the country to visit with our land tenants in both states, and to visit as many aging family members as possible in a short amount of time.

The Driveway from home....

It will always intrigue me how I feel as I cross the border into South Dakota; it's the feeling of "going home".  After so many years and establishing memories of great magnitude (marrying, having my children, life and death of loved ones) in another place I call home, it's hard to describe or even understand why I still feel this way when I return to South Dakota. Indeed, I have now lived in Oklahoma more than half of my life, but there is a familiar and welcoming comfort in the place of my upbringing.  I suspect it has to do with wonderful memories of parents that loved us well in many ways, extended family celebrations, the "music in the walls" when all we could afford to do for recreation was drag out the 6-7 different instruments to sing and play songs.   There were the family vacations taken with money saved when Mom and Dad quite smoking cigarettes, and the unity felt in hard, grueling work that comes with ranching in blazing hot sun or white-out blizzards.  Whatever the reason, there is a stirring inside... and I suspect my brother feels it as well.

The house step

The beloved barn

We always visit the homestead site.  It has gone from childhood haven with house, garden, and sheds to just the old barn and the house foundation.    Where the door used to be remains the step upon which my Uncle Ted would sit with me and teach me about the horses.  We would gaze and wonder at the stars in the evening as they came out, marveling at God's handiwork.  Though the present-day landscape lacks the evidence of busy ranching, the barn casts shadows of remembrances.  During this last visit, we walked into it through it's sliding doors and stood beside the mangers remembering the games on horseback, like water tag, barrels and stake riding, rounding up cattle with Dad, or the early morning saddling sessions to pack ourselves and our books for a 3.5 mile ride to our country school.  We found a pail with the rusty shadow of the Phillips 66 shield.  We laughed and wondered together on the foreshadowing of the major role in my life Phillips would have after I left South Dakota as my husband David worked for them his whole career, as now does a son.   I could almost see life smiling mischievously on the intersection of my youth and adulthood!

One of many  mangers

We looked down into the house foundation, now used as a dump. I remembered the stairs down to the basement for safety in storms, the coal furnace where Dad would shovel the coal morning, noon and night to keep his family warm during the harsh Dakota winter. There was an area for separating the milk and another for bringing the new-born calves or piglets for rub downs under a warm light when they had decided to arrive in the bitter cold.   Then there was the cellar for food storage. Carrots stuck in a crock with sand for preservation, jars of canned goods, with the very occasional snake seeking the cool damp comfort from hot summer days.   Our laundry area consisted of  ringer and 4 tubs (one with an agitator, 2 for rinse, the last for the rung-out clothes). For a moment, I could see the shadow of yesterdays form: Mom and I, shifting wrung-out clothes from tub to tub, finally carrying the baskets full of clothes up the stairs and out to the clothes lines to hang and dry.  The kittens and dog wrapping around our feet in affection as we worked.

The house foundation

As I reflect on all of these things, and there is so much more, this place is the touchstone, the foundation, if you will, that gave my brother and me our balance in life.  As I look back, in todays standards, it was a hard, rugged life.  But, my brother and I didn't know or see it as such.  We lived life in thankfulness for those around us, a warm house (though we could see our breath in our beds at night during harsh winter nights) and food.  We were even grateful for the very hard work we helped to accomplish every day as a member of our family. Indeed, that "hard" life, was and still remains today, a most "blessed" life, one that we revisit once in awhile, with respect and appreciation. Indeed, it is the first foundation for our grateful hearts, our work ethic, and how we value and communicate our love and care to others.  

Perfect?  No.   But, it was a steady foundation, with a commitment to each other in spite of one another's faults. And, after all these years, that foundation, though a bit roughed up, remains.  We can visit and touch it, and amazingly, as we leave, we carry that foundation to other places.  To our families, our friends, our community.

Life is indeed reflective of our foundations. Those built for us and those we choose to build ourselves. And, we have the privilege of repairing them, or passively letting deterioration take its effect.   I remain thankful for how faith has molded my foundation through life's great joys and intense pains.  I have a deep abiding gratefulness for the foundation laid for me on some number of acres on a ranch in South Dakota many years ago by loving, imperfect parents.  Yet the one foundation that surpasses all is the foundation of God's loving plan for my life, and my ultimate home with Him.   Without the latter, all foundations falter and crumble under pressure.   Indeed, it matters on which foundation I build.

"In His kindness God called you to share in His eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus.  

... and He will place you on a firm foundation."  I Peter 5:10