What's in a word......

Yesterday was one of those days.....
You know, so beautiful and unexpected.

It was 70 degrees!
I kid you not.
70 degrees in the Midwest on the 5th of January.

*I am so sorry for all of you readers back east. I know y'all are freezing your hiney's off, right now.

It was impossible to stay inside.
In fact.
This mama made a picnic for her boys.
We ate outside, we did some of our schoolwork.....outside.
We read about Daniel Boone, we read about warm air and how it rises. We read a story about an owl and the moon.....and how the moon appeared to follow the owl everywhere he went....much to the owl's frustration. We also spent much time learning the difference between "there" and "their." This at times, can be difficult to remember for a third grader. The English language is a tricky language.....

Today, it's not supposed to be quite as warm. But, we have a mild case of early spring fever, so we have cut up a big bowl of apples and carrots, to take on our nature walk and share with our favorite horsey friends. We also plan on scouting the pond, visiting the barn kitties, and looking for beauty and treasures in the midst of a January landscape.


And finally, are you wondering what all of this has to do with the title of my post?

Nothing.

I just wanted to share a regular day in the life, of my Sweet Country boys, and I.

You may be wondering about our oldest boy though. He is 17 and not much into picnics, nature walks or read alouds. :o) So he was busy reading a "Scarlet Letter", looking up biology definitions, discerning the different spheres of authority in our lives, learning about how to extract DNA strands, and starting a course on how to achieve financial freedom, in a world where many people, do not actually have any financial freedom. This should be a good one!

But.....

I digress.

As usual.

I have noticed many people who have shared a "word."
A word that they want to use as sort of a focus point for 2012.
And as I have read about their word's.
I wondered to myself about words.

Do I have a word?
Do I need a word?

What's in a word?

Can one word be that powerful?

Maybe.

And so I asked God if He had a word for me?
Thinking.....no. I doubt it.

I'm pretty much a wordy kind of girl, already.

But, as it turns out.
He did.
Or....He does.

The word that kept coming up to me in one form or another.

Which also became harder and harder to ignore was.

TRANSPARENCY

Hmmm.....

So, what exactly does transparency mean?
And how does it apply to me?

I mean....basically....I would say....transparent means, to see through. Right?

So after rolling it around a bit, and thinking it was an odd fit for me.
I grabbed the Webster Dictionary and looked up it's actual meaning.

And it said.

Transparency~ A picture made visible by a light behind it.

I sort of felt a little jolt upon reading that.

Which then made me think and ponder....

Am I supposed to make myself, the picture of my life, more visible to all of you, in the hopes that the light behind it, which is Him, may become more clearer?

Oh boy.

Aye.Aye.Aye.

That sounds very.....uncomfortable if you want to know the truth.

A little like walking naked down the street.

It feels like.....He is asking me to share more of my heart, my inner most feelings, desires, fears, examples and opinions.
Opening myself up and revealing His work in my life.

Aye.Aye.Aye.

Which feels less like naked, and more like vulnerable.

Now, there's a word!

A word in which I feel the least likely to want to be.

And it's taken me all week, a week of rolling that word around in my brain, to write this post today.

Because you know, if you say it out-loud, then you have to follow through with the whole "doing" of it....right?

But, then again. I typed it. I didn't actually say it out-loud, now did I?
Which means.
Maybe..... I can slide right on by.

Without a major commitment on my part to follow through.

Ha.

If only once you "knew" some things you could pretend you didn't.

We. shall. see.

We shall see, what exactly this means for me, and for you, and for this little old Sweet Country Life blog, in the year 2012.