Cluttered and clean

Our front porch is sacred.  It’s a place where we sneak off to in the mornings for coffee and hope the kids don’t notice.  It’s a place where we drink beer on Friday nights and watch the setting sun.  Our porch is peppered with a red tractor or a plastic fire truck or a plate of chopped up mint leaves and rosemary. My husband wants to screen it in due to all those nasty mosquitoes, but they live on this earth too and I just hate to have any barrier at all between me and the oak branches, or the sound of the cicadas, or the breezes that blow in from the west.

Our porch is where I cry, laugh on the phone with girlfriends, and pray.  It’s where I watch my children haul rocks around in wagons and listen for their sweet voices in the distance.  I wave at neighbors and watch horses and peer up at the sky for rain.  I wonder now how I ever lived in a house with only a door.  Or a portico.  Or a small entry not big enough for our large white rocking chairs.

This porch is becoming a part of my soul, big and open, sometimes cluttered and sometimes clean. Oh, my dear friend, please always be my refuge.

—

Joining others today for a link-up at: