Heartbeat on the Prairie

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"And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace."-- John 1:16 (NKJ)
12/01/2025

"And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace."
-- John 1:16 (NKJ)

Saturday check in!How are we doing?Any big wins this week? Or some areas that could use improvement?Let's celebrate the ...
11/01/2025

Saturday check in!
How are we doing?
Any big wins this week? Or some areas that could use improvement?
Let's celebrate the wins and bring encouragement to the struggles.

This dog....Honestly, this dog stays closer than my shadow.  If I'm doing dishes, she's laying between my feet. If I'm m...
10/01/2025

This dog....

Honestly, this dog stays closer than my shadow. If I'm doing dishes, she's laying between my feet. If I'm moving, she usually finds somewhere between the kitchen and dining room where she can see me. She'll lay on the floor close to me rather than find a comfy spot on the couch or recliner out of sight.

Even in the dead of night, if I get out of bed to help one of the kids, here comes Phoenix, tippy tapping along after me and up the stairs.

She's pretty sure her entire purpose is to be in my presence (and maybe occasionally snarl at my husband if he tickles me too long 🤣)

We might stand to learn something from that. If I was as committed to staying in God's presence as Phoenix is to staying in mine, what might my life look like?

If my Master was more important to me than creature comforts, if I was willing to forego certain preferences as long as it meant I was closer to God, I bet most aspects of my life would turn on their heads.

Dogs are man's best friend as they say, and we can sure learn from them, too.

I know this photo doesn't look like much, but to me, it was a landmark day. I took this after dinner one night while my ...
09/01/2025

I know this photo doesn't look like much, but to me, it was a landmark day.

I took this after dinner one night while my kids were home for Christmas break. I had this moment, after clearing the dinner dishes so that we could play games, that my table was CLEAR.

For several years when my kids were small, my dining room table was consistently a landing zone for all the stuff and detritus that collects throughout the day. The dining room table was the purgatory of activities abandoned or things waiting to be put away or stuff that I picked up and then dropped because it didn't have a designated "spot" to BE put away and I didn't have the brain power to try and figure out a permanent home for it.

Dinner was consistently a chaotic mash of sliding stuff off the table and dumping it somewhere, ANYWHERE, else, so that there was enough room for the family to sit down to a meal. For a season, in the trailer house, there was no dining room table at all.

On this evening, midway through Christmas break, I was stopped in my tracks by the realization that I had cooked dinner and brought it to the table with only a minimal, brief tidy of the things that had been in progress before it was time to cook dinner. All of those things had a place.

We didn't have to shove stuff to the end of the table to make room. We just had full, complete access to the table.

And then the kids put their dishes in the sink (or garbage can, we have no dishwasher so paper plates for the win) and I wiped up the table and we played a game.

This is such a small thing for so many people, a task that happens every day that they don't even think about, but for me it was a monumental moment of awareness that I have made progress.

It's still not perfect. My house is no "Better Home and Gardens" spread.

But it functions. It functions pretty well, actually. Over the holidays, it was filled with people, with laughter, with joy. It was the first time in years that we hosted a holiday and it was so much fun.

This cleared dining room table was a reminder that I'm making progress. I'm getting better. I'm higher functioning. And it's good to take a moment to bask in the triumph of progress, instead of just dismissing it instead of sitting in criticism of all the things that could still use improvement.

Take your wins, friends. You don't have to live in a state of constant criticism in order to keep making progress.

Of course, there's a lot of parenting that involves teaching our kids, but I was unprepared for how much my kids would t...
08/01/2025

Of course, there's a lot of parenting that involves teaching our kids, but I was unprepared for how much my kids would teach me.

This child has the horse crazy, the way that I did when I was a kid. She wants to catch the pony, even if she can't ride, just for the joy of being around a horse.

I started riding with my good friend in elementary school, and I was happy to go over and muck out stalls, for crying out loud, if it meant I got to pet some soft horse noses in the barn, or groom one.

Riding was just the cherry on top.

Somewhere along the way, I became focused on riding as the job. And to be fair, we do a lot of riding that is work. Of course we enjoy it immensely, but the job is the point, the end goal. It can be great, and I still love to do it. I love the purpose it gives both me and my horses.

But watching my middle girl beg me to go catch her horse so she could use her new brushes reminded me of the little girl I used to be, who wanted to be WITH horses just for the sake of being near them, the girl for whom the horse was the point and riding was just a fringe benefit.

In the name of grace, I have to remind myself that kids and horses can be a difficult combination, and that it was hard to enjoy being around horses when my kids were too small to know the basics of how to be safe.

But they're bigger now, and I'm older, too, and at least wise enough to let the flame that burns in my horse-hearted kiddo relight my own banked coals.

I think my goal for this winter, while the horses are right out my back door, will be to remember how to just enjoy horses for their own sake, and let go of the expectation that we should always ride and be doing or accomplishing something. Now that I've written that out, it sounds entirely silly anyway.

So, here's to teaching our kids, and more importantly letting our kids teach us.

They say that the key to success is in consistency. I'm inclined to agree, based on the simple fact that I have struggle...
07/01/2025

They say that the key to success is in consistency. I'm inclined to agree, based on the simple fact that I have struggled to find success, and also struggled with consistency, as any of you who have followed this blog for any length of time surely know by now. Erego, there must be a connection between consistency and success.

However, I also think that life tends to move in an ebb and flow, like the tides. Sometimes the tide is in, sometimes it's out. Some days you're up, some days you're down.

The question then becomes, how do we find consistency in the ebb and flow that's in the very nature of life. How do we remain consistent in the things that matter even on the down days?

I'm not sure anyone is actually consistent 100% of the time. Is that even humanly possible? I'm inclined to think not. So then, success can likely be found in the highest percentage of consistency, which does not have to be 100%. We don't need to strive for PERFECTION, just to keep the trajectory of our consistency either level or on an increase, and to at least prevent it from decreasing.

A huge part of consistency is figuring out what's manageable. You can't be consistent if you're doing too much. We have to pick and choose what we're striving to be excellent at. And then we have to build in time to rest so that we can keep being consistent instead of burning out and putting our trajectory in the tank.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. I'm still trying to figure it out, how to do everything I NEED to do with all the things I want to do.

I haven't quite managed consistency yet, but I do come back and keep trying, and I have to hope that plain old "not quitting" counts for something, too.

A while ago, my mom mentioned how I was so brave with horses when I was a kid. I kind of laughed and told her I wasn't r...
06/01/2025

A while ago, my mom mentioned how I was so brave with horses when I was a kid. I kind of laughed and told her I wasn't really that brave. Truth be told, I was notoriously cautious, I just had a pretty appropriate level of confidence in my ability, my seat and my balance. But if I was uncertain of an outcome, or worried in any way, my first response was always to either slow down or opt out entirely.

I know this was the bane of one of my best friend's existence in that season of our life. "Come ON, Erika, it's FINE" she would insist, with all the confidence I so admired. Meanwhile I was contemplating all the ways things could go horribly sideways and trying to determine if I could troubleshoot or if it was better to just avoid it altogether...she did push me to the limits of my confidence, which, to be honest, I desperately needed, because I was the very opposite of brave. Thanks for your patience in those days, Sarah, and also, you're welcome for keeping you alive and in possession of all your limbs, probably 😉

I'm pretty sure I come by this trait from my dad, who places a lot of value on avoiding as much trouble as possible through the merits of observation and foresight. I grew up listening to him point out things that would be hazardous in slightly different situations; "this gate is pretty narrow so you better be thinking about folding up the rake before you get to it" or "look at that wet patch--it will probably freeze by the time we come back so watch out for ice when you're headed home." I learned to watch, perhaps not as closely as Dad does, but still, and I learned a lot of critical thinking skills just by osmosis, or by his directly questioning the things I'd observed.

I think Dad thoroughly accomplished his goal, because I have thus far in my life managed to avoid any serious wrecks or accidents, even with horses, who are a bit risky by their very nature. That's not to say I've never come off or been hurt; I've fallen plenty, and it often hurt a bunch, but that critical thinking, looking ahead, has I think kept me out of a lot of trouble I might have otherwise stepped blithely into, were it not for my dad's voice in the back of my head saying "but wait...look...what if...?"

I guess I'm unusual in how deeply I took some of his warnings to heart. We shared a good laugh recently, because back in the day dad told me very seriously, with my freshly minted drivers license, that I should only drive 65 at night, so I didn't "outrun my headlights." Ya'll I took this as absolute gospel and would feel a little worried if I ran 68, until I was probably 25, an entire grown adult with children of my own. It was about the time the Montana speed limit increased from 75 to 80 mph, and I figured 15mph below the speed limit in the dark might be more of a hazard than outrunning my headlights.

I was THIRTY before I told Dad this, and he kinda laughed and said he just didn't want me speeding at night, so he told me 65, anticipating that I would push that. I sputtered, and said I LOVED knowing boundaries so I could stay twelve feet away and avoid any trouble, so by golly when my dad told me to only run 65 at night, I only ran 65 at night!

I get THAT quality from my mom, who shook her head, entirely unsurprised that I had, indeed, set my cruise control at exactly 65 for almost my entire driving career because that's what Dad told me to do.

So you see, on every level, I've never been interested in pushing boundaries or exceeding my comfort zone. The trouble is, horses are almost entirely outside my comfort zone these days. Hopefully, 2025 will be the year for riding more, expanding my comfort zone, and living a little more bravely.

I absolutely believe that caution is oftentimes the better part of valor, but I don't want to live fearfully, either. So here's to figuring out how to use that critical thinking to ride smarter, stay safe, and do the thing without letting the anxiety eat me up.

What are your goals for 2025? What are you working on? Do you need to be more brave or perhaps learn a little caution? We need all sorts in this life; honestly, every cautious friend like me needs the fearless bestie, like Sarah, or my husband, to say "Come ON, it'll be FINE" and every fearless friend needs someone to say "but wait, maybe we shouldn't..." here's yet another aspect of life that we find is all about balance.

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bo***...
05/01/2025

Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bo***ge.
-- Galatians 5:1 (NKJ)

Here's to our weekly check in!How are we doing on this first Saturday of 2025?Tell me about your goals for the year! Wha...
04/01/2025

Here's to our weekly check in!
How are we doing on this first Saturday of 2025?

Tell me about your goals for the year! What are you doing to crush them?

My middle child is a force to be reckoned with when she wants something. She's recently learned that she can go catch th...
03/01/2025

My middle child is a force to be reckoned with when she wants something.

She's recently learned that she can go catch the pony all on her own. I supervised the first few times, watching anxiously from the gate, reminding her to "watch the big horses!" and "make a big circle, don't get close where you can get kicked" and probably twenty other things she was rolling her eyes and telling me she was already doing.

As some of you who've been here with me for a while know, fear has been a truly deep seated battle for me when it comes to my horsemanship, and it's also trickled down to my kids. I've kept a strangle hold trying to keep them safe, and then lamented how little they ride. Well, of course, because it's exhausting trying to keep my two eyes on three kids and three horses and the heart palpitations have probably shaved ten years off my life.

So we haven't ridden.

And then I've felt guilty and frustrated because we're not raising the handy, born in the saddle kids I always dreamed of.

Of course, much about my life is different than I expected. Having a kiddo who's less mobile than average really makes it tricky to get outside. She's improving all the time, but for years, she found it difficult to walk across uneven ground without me holding her hand, which makes it a real challenge to get anything done with horses.

She's more independent now, though, and watching my middle daughter wade through these horses, using the skills I taught her, using her quietest voice to say "Hey, Vicki, hey girl" and "eeeeeasy boy, eeeeeaasy" is a reminder to me that at some point, I'll have to let go, at least a little, if I really want these kids to have success.

Don't worry, grandma and grandpa, I'm not just kicking her out there totally unsupervised, but I'm trying to learn the balance of letting go of my anxiety and giving them some rein to figure things out, while still keeping them safe to the best of my ability.

It's a dang tough tightrope to walk, but this kid especially makes me want to keep working at it.

If you have kids who ride, what's your best tip for getting them in the saddle while keeping them as safe as possible?

Do you choose a yearly theme, or word of the year? I fell out of the habit the last few years. Previously, I'd chosen th...
02/01/2025

Do you choose a yearly theme, or word of the year? I fell out of the habit the last few years. Previously, I'd chosen the phrase "grit & grace," which ultimately became my life theme, because this is what I always come back to, grit for the tough stuff and grace when we fail at the tough stuff.

The year after was "balance" which I still haven't entirely figured out, but I like to think it's better than it was.

My theme for 2025 is joy.

Joy is the thing I think most of us are really searching for. We look for it in fun and thrills, we look for it in love, we look for it...everywhere. But joy is listed as the second fruit of the spirit in Galatians 5:22, right after love.

So the deepest kind of joy comes from the spirit, from abiding with God, and can come in spite of, and not just because of our circumstances. Joy isn't the result of a perfect set of events or a life win, though we do feel it then. The best kind of joy, though, the kind the lasts and doesn't leave us when life takes a sharp left, comes from the Father.

I want to live joyfully. I want to enjoy my kids and my husband. I want to find joy in every aspect of my life. I want to teach my kids how to find joy in their lives, and that can only be lead by example. I want to live in the moment and be fully present.

My word of the year is usually always a call toward what I feel needs work in my life, and this year, I feel called to live joyfully and abundantly, for both myself and my family.

Maybe you want to join me in striving toward joy this year, or maybe you have a word of your own you're working on; either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts on joy or what you've chosen as your theme for 2025!

Happy New Year, friends! I took a little break from trying to write content for the page over the Christmas Holiday. Suf...
01/01/2025

Happy New Year, friends!

I took a little break from trying to write content for the page over the Christmas Holiday. Suffice it to say, we had a wonderful celebration. My favorite Christmas component is always the Christmas Eve candlelight service at my local church--the moment the sanctuary is dark with nothing but candles lit and the congregation begins to sing Silent Night never fails to give me chills.

We hosted family in our new place and it was such a huge blessing to have space to have everyone together. It was not as well orchestrated as my mom's always are, but you know what? It was joyful and wonderful and I think it was magical for the kids and for us. The kids are getting to be big enough to play some games with us which is SUCH a delight.

All in all, it was a beautiful way to spend the holiday. I pray your Christmas season has been warm and gentle, and that you're looking forward to this fresh new year, new seasons, new starts, and that 2025 will be a year for satisfying the needs of our hearts.

I'm so excited to step into this new year together
Thanks for allowing me along for the journey, and riding with me here at Heartbeat on the Prairie.
Lovingly yours,
Erika

27/12/2024
Hey friends! I hope y'all have had a very merry Christmas. I've taken a little break from posting over the holiday, host...
26/12/2024

Hey friends! I hope y'all have had a very merry Christmas.

I've taken a little break from posting over the holiday, hosting family and enjoying the season. I have posts queued up beginning New Years day, in addition to working on the website so I can separate crochet from writing.

To that end, you can find a link to the Heartbeat Square site in the links on the homepage. This is still deeply in the construction phase, but if you want to see updates on my crochet work, new products, sales and coupons, and more, please join the square site mailing list by clicking the little envelope icon in the bottom right corner of the website. I promise not to spam your email, just send out periodic new product alerts much as I have here on Facebook, along with sales and deals as I put them on the website.

You may also notice I've added a link to the buy me a coffee website. This is completely optional, but if you've been touched by my words and would like to offer some tangible support for less investment than most of my handmade products, this option is available. I appreciate it deeply, but please don't feel compelled, and as always, your likes, comments, and shares of my content are the easiest (and cheapest!) way to continue to support my writing.

Thank you so much for the time you give to me, and your continued love and support, whether you've been reading my words since I was thirteen or thirty. I am continually blessed, as words written have considerably less meaning than words read--there can be no author without an audience, so thank you, for reading and giving full meaning to the words I write.

Praying for blessings and peace in the coming year, and look forward to seeing ya'll on the flip side in 2025.

While I was recording the song I posted yesterday, I was thinking about the breath, or the pause. Breathing is pretty na...
06/12/2024

While I was recording the song I posted yesterday, I was thinking about the breath, or the pause.

Breathing is pretty natural, you would think, but one of the first things you learn in classical music training, whether vocals or instruments, is breath control and support. Measuring your breathing to get through a long phrase is critical. Sometimes you breathe as silently as possible; the point is the music.

Sometimes, though, the pause, the breath, IS the point. In a moment of quiet stillness, if you hear the performer draw in a deep, measured breath, you know even before the next note is sung that it's something powerful or important, a building in the silence before a final note is delivered.

When in the middle of a song, the pause, the breath, it's not a moment spent waiting for the music to resume, it's PART of the performance, it's a build to the next note, or a more powerful delivery, the peak of the song or a high note.

We tend to think of pausing or resting as a luxury, perhaps "wasted time" that we can't really afford. It's somehow an incredibly easy trap to fall into, in spite of the fact that the act of breathing, of taking a pause, is a NECESSITY. We literally need oxygen to live, and we need to breathe well in order to perform well.

We might take small, quiet sips of air in certain places, where there's frequent opportunity for breaths. But to build a powerful crescendo, or hold a sustained high note, a big, deep breath is a requirement. It can be done with musicality, and when done well, in the right place, a pause and a deep breath can be a powerful moment.

You can get through a lot of performance on quick sips of air, and probably through a lot of life on no more rest than the sleep you require at night.

Just know that if we want to build, a big, powerful moment, we must learn the power of the pause, and the art of drawing in a big, deep breath.

05/12/2024

A little something different for a winter morning.

This is one of my favorite songs and something about cold weather and being inside makes me want to make music.

Hope y'all enjoy this one. 🥰

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