These are not my personal photography, but I thought you might enjoy a look at Wisconsin’s Fall Beauty.

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Shaping and remolding, adding and removing..

One of my bucket list items that always has slid to the bottom of the bucket, is to sit at a real potters wheel and make something..probably just a mess, but it would be my mess regardless. Not sure if it’s still [possible or not, but only one way to find out).

I actually stopped my writing and googled Pottery shop, and there is one within an hour of my house. Put a call into my daughter for a pottery session. She didn’t answer but is always up for a now adventure. Autumn on the other hand was more like her Dad.  THE SAME was their activities of preference 😊

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This morning one of Pastors talked about how each season of our lives we have things that impress our hearts more than others. As we go to the next stage maybe preschool into grade school. As we move into the next stage. Our body, minds and spirits make decisions on what stay and what goes on into that next stage. This process repeats it’s self over and over and OVER again until one day you are 75. Then you take a look at your various stages and the parts that impressed you from each stage, those things that took up residence in your very soul. You carried them and their impressions. Today has been a day of reflection…which I share with you now.

• One of my earliest recalled impressions was the feeling I got every time we drove past the big old spooky building on the way to Sparta, WI. Better known as the Wisconsin Orphanage. I remember asking what that place was when I was very young. I was told that is where kids go that don’t have Moms and Dads. 

My memory doesn’t have this post card view. Sometime in my later childhood they started the process of placing these children with foster families. I REMEMBER saying when I get older, I want to be one of those foster people, so nobody has to ever live in the BIG Spooky house.

• 1988 my husband and I became Sauk Co Foster parents. Over the next 15 years we fostered almost 50 children, several sibling groups. Another impression I made with me, though I don’t remember rejoicing over 19 siblings I knew I certainly would never want to be alone.

• Another child memory was walking the halls of the Tomah VA hospital with my Dad. He was a nursing assistant there for 35 years.

I remember wondering why these grandpas had to stay here and their families didn’t come. When I ask most of the answers though not stated- my mind felt like they had been thrown away. So, I decided I wanted to become a nurse so I could be nice to people that maybe were thrown away. I certainly didn’t want any veterans to be thrown away. )(*&&^^%$$##@

Yup! I didn’t.

Thus in 1984 I became an LPN (licensed practical nurse). I loved being a nurse. My first job actually was my favorite of all. I was a nurse at a Catholic Convent in Campbellsport, WI. I got to do very practical nursing. They  were totally self-governing. If I had a question I walked across the parking lot and talked to the people that had the answers. It helped that they thought I was really cool😊

In 1971 I married my own 22 yr old veteran and tried my best for almost 50 years to never let him feel thrown away. It was my very special honor.

OUR SON HAD A T-SHIRT THAT SAID “ MANY PEOPLE FEEL LUCKY TO HAVE MET THEIR HERO IN THEIR LIFETIME”  But I am the lucky one I WAS RAISED BY MINE!

• Through the years I attended church and always remember as a child, what seemed like a lot of tired grandmas bringing their energetic grandkids to church.

Now this Great Grandma gets up 5 days a week and takes her 3 Great Granddaughters to school. We pray together each morning, and I tell them that Great Grandma Hope and Jesus LOVE THEM A LOT!!

• I also always wanted to be a mom and stay home with my kids. Now let me say I had no aspirations of staying home, or giving birth to twenty of them😊😊

• In 2012 myself and 4 others began a ministry to the homeless families of the Sun Prairie school district. In 2017 we opened our building that still houses 12 families.

• So, I believe the Pastor was right….at 75 yrs old I made up of pieces of my everyday past.

Many times, in life it seems God takes you a totally new direction…. but this reflection has helped me understand that we are planted in different areas. IF we leaving Him in charge of the sowing, we will then bare the best fruit.

I end with a poem that I have learned more to understand and Love.

Author Unknown

Blessings!   Thanks for Reading!

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The Tapestry

Life is but a weaving, between the Lord and me

I cannot choose the colors, He weaves steadily

Oft times He weaves sorrow, and I in foolish pride Forget

He sees the upper, and I the underside

Not ’til the loom is silent, and the shuttles cease to fly

Will God unroll the canvas, and reveal the reason why

The dark threads are as needful, in the Weaver’s skillful hand

As the threads of gold and silver, in the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares, nothing this truth can dim.

He gives the very best to those, who leave the choice to Him.

Author unknown

Quoted by Corrie Ten Boom