In every season there is a grace for something that comes particularly apparent in that season.  It's like the extra supernatural help that you need to learn sometimes a particularly difficult lesson.  In this season of Covid, there were a lot of things that got put into perspective and a lot of habits that revealed themselves.  It's funny how when things get quiet, what is on the inside of you becomes loud.  It was always there, it just was less noticeable with all the noise  of life.

I love my horse Legend.  If you follow my Facebook, he's probably photoed and talked about more than anything else including my kids.  I am about to have a grandchild so I am thinking that may change a bit.  I have owned Legend a long time.  About nine years.  In nine years time, Legend has learned everything about being a riding horse from me.  I got him as a two year old and put every ride and have had the most interaction with him than any other human.  With that displays the type of relationship that he and I have.  The interesting part about interacting with animals is that you don't speak the same language and you don't have the same value systems so in order to enjoy each others company and communicate effectively, you have to pick up signs of communication.  Over the years if you really want to learn, you start to learn the language of a horse.  It becomes funny though because the body language of a horse isn't much different from the body language of a human.  

For example, when Legend gets a bit nervous he starts to fidget with anything.  He will play with my shirt or asked to be scratched different places.  He will move his feet and just kind of be slightly annoying.  The flip side of this is that he is a very touchy horse.  He's curious and touches everything.  In the past I have wanted him to just stop.  Stop being annoying when we are doing certain things.  Now understand that Legend does not bolt, buck or rear.  He doesn't do anything harmful or outrageous, he just fidgets.   

When I get people into my office to come and talk to me do you know that one of the tell tail signs that they show me when they are thinking about something that is causing anxiety is that they will start to fidget.  They will wring their hands, tap their leg.  Their body will start somehow to be in motion because their mind is not at peace, it is in motion.  The body follows the mind.  

I am taking this opportunity with Legend instead of asking him to stop, to start to say I recognize you are worried about something and I would like to wait until you are ok with what we are doing.  When he becomes ok, he gives me different signs but the best sign is he will get peaceful and present.  His thoughts aren't running anywhere, they are with me and his body is calm.  In the past I have ignored these things first off because I didn't understand what they were communicating.  I kind of thought this is just him and I and there is a element of that.  Like I said, he also is curious and touches lots of things frequently and can be kind of like a kid with ADD.  The other side of that is that I wanted to accomplish something and it was easier to ignore small signs of anxiety than to stop, listen and be present.

Covid has forced us all to stop.  I am not sure that everyone has learned to listen and be present but I am very aware that there is grace for it.  There are seasons of dreaming about where you are going and what is coming next but this season I believe is about learning what really is going on inside of you and learning to be present with it.  It's easy to set aside the small things that bother me or overlook those things in my family or friends, especially when I have a agenda and I am taking over the world so to speak.  This season we've been asked to stay home and stop everything and what I have seen come of it is the equivalent in the horse world from fidgeting like Legend does to full on bucking.  The ugly has come to the surface.  We are heading into a season of new freedom but there is something to be said and learned about getting in tune with myself and with those around me and get present.  I actually don't want to push past my pain or anyone else's.  I want to see it and address it.  I want to sit in places where it hurts and find out why.  I want to watch my friend wring their hands and stop the conversation and say hey, looks like whatever is on your mind is causing some anxiety.  Would you like to talk about that?

I am now lately with Legend having many talks.  When he shows signs of anxiety, I take a step back and say no problem.  I notice that you are anxious, I will wait for you to be ok.  I then wait for him to give me a yes before we go further.  With my relationships I am putting aside my fears and waiting for someone's permission or for them to make a decision.  I am sitting with them in their pain and letting them know it's no problem, I'll wait for you to find some peace.  You don't have to pretend with me and we can both be right here in the moment together.  When you are ready, we can move on together.  Sometimes it means that someone stays in pain longer than I would like but I allow them the choice and I don't push them past it for us to get somewhere.  I've realized that until their mind is quiet, the issue is not settled and it's ok, I can wait.

Being patient and being present go hand in hand.  I have not been great at either.  I am learning to love both.

I have been looking on Pinterest at cool looking chairs that are custom made.  They are absolutely beautiful but the price is about $1500 and up for a single chair.  I love expensive things but I don't have the budget for that.  Even if I had the budget for it I am unsure that I would spend the money on it.  It just seems like too much.  Instead I did a bunch of research on how to reupholstering a chair and figured I would dive in. The worst thing would be that it didn't work and I would go back to buying furniture from others.  I went on Facebook marketplace and found a pair of chairs that said they had horse hair stuffing in it.  Something made me think that if it had horsehair that it was worth rebuilding.  Here is a picture of one of the chairs.

My pictures and directions will not be amazing on this blog because I wasn't blogging at the time of the chair.  I have another to do so that post will be more of the how to.  Basically to do these chairs I had to rip them completely apart.  Every blog said to do this carefully.  To take lots of pictures and to save each piece of fabric so that I could use it as a template.  I did that.  I took video, I saved pieces and then I proceeded to reupholster the chair completely different than how the original chair was put together so none of that actually helped me on this one.  If you were recreating the exact same way though it would save you a ton of time and guessing to have those pieces.

I washed the horsehair stuffing in pillowcases.  It was pretty simple.  I took it all out and then just tied a knot at the top and washed it like you would any other clothing.  Do not put it in the dryer.  You are going to want to separate and spread out the horsehair on a counter or something and let it air dry.  It's fast but you will really want to not skip steps.  The chair is time consuming so you need to think of it as enjoying a process and not how quick you can get it done.

​I woke up this morning with a familiar feeling and I thought because I’ve had it many times that others may too but in a different way. In the past 6 months I’ve lost 32 pounds and it’s changed my body etc for the good. I’m very happy about it. There are days mentally though where if I went by my thoughts or feelings that I would swear to you that I gained 32 pounds back over night. If I eat the wrong thing my body reacts not in a good way. This feeling has always made me feel like crap. Every time this happens my thoughts will say that I feel like crap therefore I must look like crap and because the feeling is familiar and so are the thoughts I would swear to you that I gained all the weight back over night. It’s the craziest thing. It takes stepping on a scale in the morning to bring me back to truth. Sometimes the scale will say I’m the same, sometimes I’m up a pound. I have yet to gain 32 pounds in one night.
This is kind of a funny way to describe the way our mind works but I’m catching myself. In the past, that feeling would end up becoming a self fulfilling prophecy because while I wouldn’t gain the weight back over night I would eventually gain it back because in the past when I felt that way I wouldn’t step in the scale. I felt like it was better to just avoid the truth than actually see what it was. In avoiding truth, I went on how I felt and if I had enough of those days, I would go back to eating and doing what I was doing and would be back where I was.
There are familiar feelings and familiar spirits that both when not checked in with actual truth will take you off course because they remind you of something that was and that feeling while not enjoyable is familiar. PTSD is a great example of this. PTSD triggers a person by something that happens in the present, a sound, smell, action whatever that reminds you of a traumatic event from the past. Even though that event is not currently happening, your brain reacts like it is and you will see yourself or others have a very strong reaction to something that isn’t actually happening but it was triggered by something familiar that made you mind think it was.
Why is this important? Thoughts and feelings are a dime a dozen. I have thousands of them every day. They change throughout the day. They aren’t necessarily good or bad, they are just information about how I currently feel right now and it’s good information. They are in fact not truth though. This is where you will end up derailing yourself if you are not careful. So fact, this morning I woke up with my body feeling crappy. I’ve felt this way many times and it always triggers not a good feeling in me. Truth…I ate stuff yesterday I shouldn’t have that makes me feel not good. It also inflames my body, makes me retain water and just in general is not a great idea. Truth, I am probably up a pound in water weight today. Truth, I didn’t gain 32 pounds and all I need to do is stay away from that stuff and I’ll go back to feeling great and my inside matching my outside. If you don’t align your thoughts with truth, you end up back where you were because your mind is a terrible decision maker. It takes in information and processes it based on what it has experienced. Just because you have experienced something once doesn’t mean it’s happening again and just because you’ve never experienced something doesn’t mean it exists. Truth is your friend. It can feel like a scary friend but it’s actually your best friend and will keep you on track to where you are headed instead of putting you back to your past. The best part for the Christian is truth is a person. Align yourself there and you will experience the Psalms 23 life where you are lead by peaceful streams and have dinner in the presence of your enemies with no fear. Selah…..

​More goat stories! The boys have been home for a few days after eating down blackberries in mckinleyville for many months. One major upside is Spade no longer has his jewels and man, those suckers should have gone a long time ago. If you haven’t had goats, intact male goats literally pee all over their face and beard to attract females. Their pee smells like...well really bad goat. There is a reason why they say horny as a billy goat because it’s all they think about 24/7 so most of your interactions involve some sort of goat pee. Him with no balls actually pees for normal reasons and no longer on his face. This is a massive improvement for everyone else.
Today I decided to put them in the front yard. We are home so I can watch my two old dogs. I’m thinking it should be pretty peaceful and there’s stuff I don’t want to mow. Now I own one German Shepherd that has a ridiculously high prey drive, (read this as if it moves and breathes, she’s on it. Balls she could care less but animals are different). She has been going nuts completely obsessed with the goats. They’ve been in the trailer and it’s almost made her insane. We put her and our other female in the kennel. They’ve never gotten out or been able to get out. We’ve put them in there for 8 years now. I’ve never had an issue. She sees we took the goats out and probably 20 minutes later Marty jumps up and runs out. Os has managed to get out of the kennel and the goats are tied in the yard so they are sitting ducks basically. Somehow her and the other female pulled the door on the kennel open enough to squeeze all 90 plus pounds of her out. She didn’t bite them at all but she was wanting to herd them. Both Marty Pronovost and I are yelling at the dogs and trying to decide how to fix this. The dogs don’t have collars on so we grab goats and our daughter comes out. Now we have a pit bull in our house that can’t be with the other females either. Yes, we should call our house a zoo. Alona goes to put her dog in the house and Marty stops her before disaster number two which would be a pit bull German Shepherd dog fight. Those we have seen and they are ugly. She finally gets both dogs back to the kennel of which now has several bike locks on it and a few other things to make sure they can’t escape. No animal died today.
Meanwhile, Spade has decided that the front deck is pretty cool and I’m fairly sure he would like to be with us on the couch. Hunter is trying to decide if Spade should be allowed on the deck or not. He’s old though so doing anything about anything is a lot of work. Oh, and Carmel is in the back there laying in the sun eating grain. Goats are back home!