this is home

The mellow evening sun sinking toward the horizon, like a drop of blazing gold. The swish of long green wheat blades in the front hayfield. The red-chestnut glow off my horse's sorrel coat, the delicious scent of clean dirt and new leaves, the shrill of red-winged blackbirds in the marsh. All of this - this is home.

Mom tells me that Dad has already started cutting hay, and that the windrows were huge and fluffy with sweet-smelling, fresh-cut orchardgrass and alfalfa. All the fields are early this year, ready to be cut two or three weeks before usual. Then, of course, late-spring rain is always a risk, but it's hard even to hate the ill-timed rain when it smells so clean and life-giving.

These are the long spring days and frog-singing evenings that set my mind free to imagine instead of worry - to hope instead of stress. To contemplate God unfettered by worldly frets and disturbing headlines. To worship in perfect silence, with a song as simple as the very breath and heartbeat I've been given.

I think Heaven might be something like this.