The little girl holding onto the huge doll is me. This picture L to R is my baby sister, my Dad holding my brother, me, the doll, and my Mom.

My parents both married at age 17 and I am their first born. For the first few years of my life we lived in a little red rent house that was on my Grandpa and Grandma’s farm.

At my age of 3 we moved to our own farm on the Upper Hilham Road in Overton County Tennessee.

My Mom was a stay at home Mom and my Dad worked during the day and farmed in the afternoons and on weekends.

We had all kinds of animals on our farm and it was such a good life. We grew up drinking milk straight from the cow and making butter from the cream and had our own eggs from the hens and our own hogs for meat. We participated in the work of the farm and raised a garden every year and worked in that too. We had hands on experiences that helped our parents but also gave us very many life lessons that we still use to this day.

Our Mom read to us out of only 2 books that I can remember. One was the family Bible and the other book was Mom’s high school English literature book and is probably the reason that I always wanted to become a writer. I loved the stories from the Bible of David and Goliath and Daniel in the Lions Den but also loved the many plays of Shakespeare and the poetry in the English lit book.

And I also loved country music. We had no TV in the young years so we listened to music a lot. Our Mom was the piano player at church so we grew up on the hymns but she was also a huge fan of Patsy Cline and the country greats. Music was a big part of my growing up years.

One Christmas when Sis and I were in grade school we got a little record player for Christmas and an album of the Mary Poppins movie with Dick Van Dyke. We wore that album out and love it till this day.

My sister and I always shared a room and part of that time had bunk beds. I always got the top bunk because she had very bad eyesight and Mom always gave her the bottom bunk. I didn’t mind though because I was never afraid of heights and enjoyed it.

Our neighbors were all good friends of ours but no one lived really close to us so we played outside and rode our ponies a lot and built a lot of tree houses and forts. We got along good together most days but sometimes had our fights with each other too.

I am 15 months older than my brother and he is 18 months older than my sister so my Mom and Dad had their hands full but they survived. They were both young and great parents and made simple things so fun for us. Mom had a huge imagination and played games with us when she needed housework done and we fell for it every time. Our Dad made sure that we were competitive as he was always having us do some kinds of feats when people came over. He made us feel very special.

We never felt bored or lacking because we didn’t have much money. We were poor but back then everyone else around us must have been poor too because it seemed all the families in our area was just the same.

During the winter months when we got heavy snows the neighbors would all congregate at our house and the parents would play a card game called Pitch in the kitchen while us kids would play monopoly or old maid or jacks or pick up sticks. We always had fun times with our neighbors. In the summer months after church the neighbors would gather in a cow pasture and play softball.

Fall was my very favorite season and still is. I love the beauty of all the colors and the cool and crispness in the air and also the knowing that winter is right around the corner which is a season that I love as well.

I wouldn’t trade anything for the childhood that I had and the farm life that I enjoyed. I have a great love for life, for nature, for our country, and for my fellow man.

I see the glass half full always and believe that we are placed here on this earth to leave our mark and that I am at present carrying my baton but will pass it on someday to someone else and it is an honor and a privilege to be in such a position to do so.

I love living in America and I often stand amazed at why God chose to let me be born here and raised the way that I was. I am so fortunate and graced to be in the life that I have!

I am trying to learn to write and share. I just wanted all of you to know a little bit more about my background and where I came from. I hope you enjoy the things that I write and I want to be a light in a sometimes seemingly dark area and I want to spread as much Joy around as I possible can.

My first day to start blogging was September the 28th and I stand amazed at how well things are going thus far. The outreach of the WordPress.com is a gift in itself. I can’t believe how I can sit here in little ole’ Livingston, Tn. and write and my words can instantly travel all across the world with the click of the publish button. It just blows my mind!

I just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making a little girl’s dream come true.

Bless you and Goodnight!

Yesterday I was visiting at my son’s home and at times he will play a YouTube video to soothe his sleepy toddler. I was in the kitchen at the sink and I heard the familiar words of a song and it brought back a memory that I had forgotten about.

One night when I was in my late twenties I was attending our church ladies monthly meeting. This particular night we were meeting at a private home and the meeting had ended and our hostess had invited us into her kitchen for some refreshments. I can still remember what I ate that night for that is how vivid this memory is.

It had to be around the end of May because the dessert I ate was in season. It seemed everyone there was excitedly discussing their upcoming vacation plans. The more discussion I heard the more sad I began to feel. Just a few years previously I had birthed our 4th child and we had never had the money to go anywhere on vacation.

I left that home that night in the pits of despair and felt like just sobbing.

The next morning as I faced the same chaos that I faced every school morning my despair turned into bitterness. I not only had four kids of my own but taught Sunday School, was in charge of Christmas plays, and babysit in the nursery at Wednesday night Bible study much of the time.

I am not writing this to brag in any way on myself but just to let you envision where I was in my life during that time.

After rushing all morning getting 4 kids ready for their destinations and herding them out the door I was driving into work and was having a deep conversation with God. I was telling God how unfair that I thought that He was to me because I was trying to work so hard for Him.

I had my car radio on low and I remember as I yielded from Rickman road onto Highway 111 there at the Farmer’s Co-op, the song Thank You by Ray Boltz came on the radio. Oh how my pity party tears began to roll as I listened to the words of that song. Especially the part of the song that the child came up and said Thank You for you taught my Sunday School when I was only 8.

I released my bitterness that morning as I drove along and realized that some rewards come after we die and when we reach heaven and my hurt over not giving my kids a vacation subsided and I went my merry way.

I am here to tell you that before that summer was up a series of events happened and we were blessed to buy a mini van and we took our children on their one of only two vacations we ever got to take them to.

We went to Washington DC and also to New York to the Statue of Liberty. As we drove across the Potomac I felt like a history book opened up and all that we had studied about in that book flowed out of the book and sprang up into real life. I think I was more excited than the kids were!

We toured all the Smithsonions and our oldest was probably 10 and our youngest probably 3 and I remember thinking how our older 3 children were studying all the visuals we were seeing in the museum of American History….. it was a site to behold!

And myself, I got to see the Statue of Liberty which had been a lifelong desire of mine but a desire that I thought I would never see fulfilled but would take to my grave.

We stayed 1 night on the way to Washington with my brother’s family, stayed 2 nights in Motel 6’s and spent another night at my brother’s on the way back. We were cheapskates but we didn’t care….. we were on our glorious vacation!!

God gave us that vacation and it WAS glorious! Yesterday, as I heard the Ray Boltz song drift into the kitchen I got a big sweet smile on my face as I remembered once again how God had taken my pity frown and turned it upside down into a smile of praise! My God loved me that much! He loves you too!

This morning I was standing at my kitchen window and it was around 6:30 and I saw the Overton County school bus going down our road and it wasn’t even daylight yet.

I instantly thought of our children and how I made them catch that bus at that time of morning and I thought, Wow! that was so early!

I was a Mom that loved and does love my children dearly but I am also a believer in teaching them how to stand on their own two feet so basically I was not much of a coddler.

I am not a real huggy, touchy, feely Mom and sometimes the twins criticize me for that but I think they have finally got used to me.

I remember when Danny was in 3rd grade and each student was supposed to make these little wooden cars and they were going to have a racing contest with them on a certain day and the winner would get a blue ribbon. Danny was all excited about it and we went down to Granny Poston’s house that weekend and Danny’s aunt Martha still had her wooden car from 3rd grade and it was on a shelf in the den. Martha told Danny that he could borrow her car to use as a model to go by in making his if he wanted to. I immediately saw the wheels turning in his little head so on the way home I explained to him that Martha’s car was just to be a model to go by and that he could not enter her car because that would be cheating. He said ok.

Several weeks passed and the car derby had been held that day and Danny came home with the blue ribbon and was bursting in the door to tell me all about it and show me his blue ribbon. I was proud and happy for him and told him so.

I don’t know if his conscience got to bothering him or what but before the night was over his countenance had completely changed and I began to suspect that he had cheated and entered Martha’s car. After supper was over I confronted him with my suspicions and he ended up telling me that he had indeed entered his aunt’s car. I sent him to his room to wait while I decided what his punishment would be.

I let him stew in that bedroom for a while and then I called him out and told him that we were going to walk into school early the next morning and before class started he was going to stand in front of everyone and tell them what he had done and give the blue ribbon back. Oh, how he cried at my words…. he begged me to spank him instead.

The next morning I kept my word and walked in to school with him and went to his classroom. I called the teacher out into the hall and explained what was going on and we waited. All the class finally arrived and were seated at their desks and then the teacher called him in from the hallway…. I stood outside the door and watched. My heart broke for him and after he lay the ribbon on the teacher’s desk he went to his desk and sat down and the teacher came to the hall to speak to me; she said Mrs. Poston I am not sure I could have done that. As I left there that morning I cried all the way to work. When I got to work my co-workers shamed me and told me how mean I was.

A few weeks after that Danny came to me while I was cooking supper and he handed me a book and asked me to read this certain story in it. The story was in the pioneer days and basically a boy had stolen a piece of candy from the general store and the Mom in the story had made him go back to the store and confess what he had done and pay for that candy. I looked up from reading the story with tears in my eyes and Danny was smiling and had a twinkle in his eyes…. I said I guess I am not the only mean Mom and he smiled and said yes.

I was rough on our kids and made them do chores, work through sicknesses, and be accountable for their actions. They weren’t too fond of me a lot of the time but I am so proud of them today and the fine people that they are.

The worst thing you can do for your kids is to do everything for them.

I watched that big yellow bus in the morning light this morning and I had compassion in my heart for my kids as I gave them a rough road to travel and I am not so sure that I could be that firm now that I am older and my drill sergeant ways have softened a lot but I am sure proud of them!

As I have written in an earlier blog, we planned on having 2 children and only living in our first home for 5 years and then getting something bigger.

Fast forward to 1983 and 1984…we had our fourth child in December of 1982. Our little 1100 square foot house with no basement was bursting at the seams.

We begin our hunt for a bigger home. We had certain stipulations in mind. We both grew up on Upper Hilham road in Overton County and all we were interested in was finding a home on that road. God quickly shut that door.

We had started going to a new church when our youngest was 6 months old and since Upper Hilham road had been taken off the table, we began to look at properties on the road to our new church or somewhere near by. We believed that we could be more involved and effective at our church if we lived in the neighborhood and dwelt among the people.

I prayed consistently about this mission we had of finding a new home. It was hard to find the time to really look at houses and land but we finally found the house and property where we live today. As I said, we had stipulations, we wanted land enough to share with 4 grown children someday if the need arose and they were in need and wanted to put a mobile home on our land or something. We wanted to live outside the city limits but close enough in to the town to be near activities. We wanted woods, water, hills and hollows as we had both grown up with all of that and we wanted that for our kids.

The real estate lady brought us out to this home that we had found. I will never forget as it was spring of the year and the bottom near the river was all in bloom with yellow buttercups or daffodils as some people call them. I instantly fell in love with the house but it was not until we walked to the hill behind the house and saw those yellow buttercups in that bottom land that I really loved this place! God spoke in my spirit that day and said, “All of this will be yours someday”. I thought back, yeah right! We had already gotten the asking price and it was way over our budget so we had to tell the real estate lady that we would just keep looking.

Several months passed by and I got a call from the real estate lady asking if we were still interested in the property and I told her yes as we had looked and looked but nothing really fit our stipulations like that place did.

We went back the second time and looked again and also talked to the bank officials before we went out and made the lady what we felt like was a decent offer. The owner turned us down and once again we were forced to keep looking elsewhere.

Several more months passed by and the real estate lady called again and said that the home and land were going to go up for auction and was we still interested. Yes, yes, of course we were because nothing else was working out.

My husband had just taken a new job and he had to take a speed test at the factory the day of the auction and was not able to attend. I had never been to an auction in my life and was scared to death! I had a first cousin that was a lawyer and I asked him if he would accompany me and do the biding for me. We also had to make arrangements at the bank once again as we still owed for our 1100 square foot house. The bank then gave us stipulations…..we could bid on the new house but only up to a certain amount that they specified, we had to turn around in 30 days and auction off the little house and for just a short period of time we would owe for 2 houses and they agreed to let us pay interest only until our little house sold.

On the morning of the auction I was a nervous wreck and stood in the yard of where we live now as straight and still as a statue and let my cousin do all the bidding. My Mom and Step-Dad showed up to the auction and panicked because they thought that I was not there and my Step-Dad went inside to place a phone call to my employer to see if I had left yet. The auctioneer thought he was an interested buyer and it held up things for just a bit.

Anyway, when I realized that I had gotten the home for 2000 less than the bank had specified and 21,900 less that the original asking price and 7,000 less that we had offered the home owner on our second visit I was overcome with tears of joy! I went up to the owner as she stood on the front porch and kept thanking her over and over and blubbering like a crazy woman! I also bought the wood stove for 40.00 and the porch swing for 20.00. I was ecstatic!

We had a new home but there was still the issue of selling our old house at auction and selling it quickly. We were advised to only move the cluttered items to the new place but to stage the old house with furniture, drapes, and niceties to make it look inviting.

The auction on our old house was 2 days before Christmas of 1985 and only 2 families had shown up for the auction. My Mom had not slept a wink that night before and was worried sick about us doing this. Our oldest son had taken a screwdriver the night before and stabbed holes in one of the closet doors so we had basically been up most of the night too patching and fixing that door. Why he did that we will never know!

I had a strange calmness about me that morning of the auction as God had already proven Himself to me big time and I was confident that He would not let us down on this day either. One of the 2 families there bought that little house for 9000 more than we had originally given for it. We were going to be able to swing this!

After the auction was over we moved our Christmas tree out to the new place, decorations and all and we slept on the floor. We were so excited! One of my favorite memories in this house is the 4 kids sitting on the steps going down into the basement with smiles on their faces from ear to ear.

We finished moving everything on the 27th of December in 1985 with the help of my brother. It was snowing like crazy that day but we didn’t care. Our youngest celebrated his 3rd birthday here in our new home 4 days later. It has been home ever since.

You say, boy that was stressful! Yes it was! God was teaching us how to rely on Him and how to have patience. We were young and we wanted everything to work out quickly but it didn’t. We had to sweat for it and offer up lots of prayers and learn some things. But, you know what? That whole house buying experience was and has been one of our biggest faith building lessons.

We have had a wonderful life here on our little piece of ground and just 3 years ago my husband and I were thinking of retiring and we did some upgrades to our home and while in Gatlinburg we had one of those wooden signs made that says Poston Ponderosa and it hangs over our steps on our back deck. This place is so special to us, it has only 7.4 acres but has woods, hills, hollows, water, enough land, outside city limits, and close to town……for you see God had a plan!

We attend a little country church right by our home. The people there are like family to us.

Last week I wrote about taking our little 8 year old grandson to see the Ark Encounter in Williamstown Kentucky and today a friend at church brought me this book to keep and share with my grandson.

Prayers from the Ark is a book of little poems that were written from the perspective of the animal passengers on the ark and from Noah. Here is the table of contents:

This book is just the neatest little gift! As I got the gift home and opened up the pages to look at it, I began to think about my church family and what all those people mean to me. We all come from individual homes but really are like a big ole’ family.

Today we took our youngest grandchild to church with us and everyone just made over her and told us how precious she was. Our tail feathers plumped up like 2 barnyard peacocks and we were so proud!

We have a time period at our little church called – hug time- and it is a few minutes before the preaching starts where we all walk around the room and hug, shake hands, or just speak to one another. No one shuns another or just visits their own little click for it is genuine affection that we share! The preacher calls us back to attention by ringing a big cow bell! It is such a fun time!

I cherish the love that we share in our little country church and the support system we have there. When our son died 4 years ago these same people were at our home to comfort and share our grief. Our life is so enriched by having all of these people in our lives.

When our preacher leads us in prayer he always asks God to be with us but never fails to ask God to be with the little church down the road and the big church up in town. That prayer means so much to me as that is how we should feel. Our God is big enough to go around and be there for everyone!

If you read my blogs and don’t have one of these church families in your life then I encourage you to find one and find one quick. I don’t know how we would survive without our little church family and the blessing that they are to us! It is a little piece of heaven here on earth!

We have had our youngest grandchild here with us this weekend and it got me to thinking about my own grandmothers now that I am one myself.

My dad had an accident while training a horse when I was in the first grade and the horse fell on him and broke his back. From first grade until he died when I was 18 he rarely had a day free from pain and was in the hospital a lot and had two major back operations.

Because my dad was sick a lot of the time us three kids spent a tremendous lot of time with our two grandmothers.

My dad’s mother was a real worker and probably one of the best cooks around. She was the matriarch of the family and lived on a farm and rose early in the morning before daylight and began the work of the day and the preparing of the meals for the farm hands. I learned my work ethic from her. She taught me so many things.

I used to love to sit on her front porch with the two entrance doors and help her break beans or just sit in that wonderful porch swing that she had and have conversation with her.

After my grandpa died she would come around ever so often and stay with us for a week at a time and that time with her was glorious. She never did learn to drive or have a driver’s license so we always had to pick her up and check on her and take her places. I loved spending time with her.

My other grandma, my Mom’s mother taught me just as many things but in different ways. She was a horrible cook and when we went to her house she had a cupboard full of food items that were instant like potato sticks in a can, Tang instant breakfast drink, and popcorn that popped on the stove in an aluminum pie pan and foil that rose in the air as the popcorn popped. And oh, the Campbell’s soup cans in that cupboard! Every kind of soup you could think of!

This grandma always had a little black stool that she would put over in the bathtub before bed and we would have to sit on it and wash our feet. We played hard at her house and I can only imagine the dirt that was on our bodies in different places but to her the feet was all that mattered. We also slept upstairs there and even though she had indoor plumbing we were told to use the slop jar while upstairs. Chamber pot to some would be the word. This grandma was very unique and she drove a car and loved to run around and visit and oh she could talk. She was a talker for sure!

This maternal grandmother of mine taught us all three how important that prayer was. She had made these little knee cushions and had one for each one of us and for herself too and each night that we stayed there she would get out those cushions before bed and place them on the floor by her big bed and we would all kneel down beside of her and say our goodnight prayers.

This grandma was also an encourager. I found a card recently in my family Bible that she had sent me when I was a young mother and in the card she had told me what a fine job me and my husband were doing.

Some people live far away from their grandchildren and sometimes that is just how it is but I am very thankful that I can be close and involved in my grandchildren’s lives just like my grandmas were in mine.

I remember one time when my Dad had his very first back operation in Nashville and my Mom stayed down there with him and they were gone for three months. My dad’s mother moved in with my Mom’s mother and the two grandmas took care of us the whole time. My dad’s two brothers also went to our farm every single day and fed the livestock, gathered the eggs, and milked the cow. As they returned home they would stop at grandma’s house and leave the milk and eggs there for us kids to have.

I had an uncle James too, my Mom’s brother that lived with my grandmother on my Mom’s side. He was born a blue baby and also had polio as a small child so he never married and was crippled for life and lived there with my maternal grandmother. My paternal grandmother was such a good cook that when she lived there for the three months my Uncle James cried when she left because he had never tasted such good food.

Last night I wrote about how older folk have so much to offer the younger generation and I know my two grandmas both influenced my life…..probably more than my parents did. Just about everything I am today I owe to both of them.

If you are a grandma or grandpa, I salute you and oh what a mission field you have with those grandchildren. You do not have to serve in a foreign land because you are needed so much here at home.

Little things my grandmas did or said are just fried in my brain. Hardly a day goes by that I do not think of one or both of them or something they taught me or said to me.

Psalm 71:17-18 NKJV

O God, You have taught me from my youth; And to this day I declare Your wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray headed, O God, do not forsake me, Until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to everyone who is to come.

Several weeks ago, I was out on my deck watering my flowers and I looked down at my pot of Hen and Chicks and one of the huge older plants had shot up towards the heavens and had bloomed! I had never in my lifetime seen one of these plants do this. I called to my husband to come and see and asked him if he had ever seen this and he said no as well.

The blooms on this plant were so beautiful and because I was so curious I asked on Facebook if any of my friends and family had seen this before. Most of my contacts replied that they had not but there was this one friend that said that the plant will do this right before it dies. I gasped and asked, “My whole pot will die?”. She replied that the pot would be fine but just this one plant would die.

We went on vacation about that time so I kind of forgot about my unusual plant and when we got back I had to go out and see if my friend was correct.

The plant still had some blooms on it but was beginning to fade and as you can see parts of the life of the plant were already gone.

A few weeks later this is what I saw:

My friend was absolutely correct! The entire plant had died even though all the rest around it was just fine and healthy as could be.

This process that took place in my plant got me to thinking. I am 61 years old and compared to a basketball game I feel like I am in the fourth quarter of life.

My husband and I are both retired now after raising 4 children and working really hard on our jobs for years. Are we to just sit down and quit and coast on out of this life? I do not think so. My take is that we are to continue to grow and blossom until the day that we die.

In Psalm 92:14 of the NIV version it reads: They will still bear fruit in old age, they will stay fresh and green,

That verse confirms what I already believe that we as older persons have a lot of knowledge and gifts that we can pass down before we die. We can be an encourager and a helper to the younger folk. We can lend a hand when they need us and we can love on little children and spend one on one time with them when young parents are in the rush of just making a life.

I learned a lot from my little plant that day and I hope that you do too. This is what it looks like now:

I marvel at this picture the most for as you see the dead plant left an empty space in the pot but I guarantee that by next summer all those little baby plants will grow in size and that space will be filled. So is the cycle of life. We grow to maturity and then we die and make room for the next ones following behind us.

I do not have any problems with aging because I feel needed somewhere everyday and look for the opportunities. I hope you do too older folk!

Because of sickness we have our newest little granddaughter at our house to care for. As I looked down at her precious face it got me to thinking of long ago and our very first grandchild.

Marlee Marie Poston was born while our oldest son was stationed in Korea. He had asked me to stand in for him in the surgery room as she was delivered by C-section.

I was very happy to do this for him and seeing her be born has always been a very special memory for me. She was also named after me as my middle name is Marie and my mother’s middle name is Marie. It is our family name handed down.

Marlee was a precious child and she looked a lot like our son did when he was a newborn. The picture above is a shadow box I have in my bedroom that is her first Easter dress and her funeral flowers that I carried in my hand on the plane ride back to Tennessee.

Our granddaughter was born April 6 of 2000 and died on June 1 of 2000. She died from SIDS.

After we lost her we have had only boys born into our family…..lots of boys!

This year we finally had another little girl and we are so thankful and proud to have her.

I speak a lot of trials and struggles in my life and I always say that I do not age by birthdays but by events that happen in my life. Losing Marlee was a huge birthday for me and it cut me to the core. Our son saw his daughter for the first time as she lay in her little casket. I also had a lady at church make her an heirloom christening gown and she ended up being buried in it. It was a very sad and sorrowful time in all of our lives.

I know a lot of people everywhere are reading my simple little blogs but if they can help just one person in the US or in another country then it is all worth it to me.

The picture at the bottom of this blog is one that hangs in my living room. When my husband and I were married we lay our hands on a family Bible as husband and wife and this verse is where the Bible was turned to. The words to this verse have very special meaning to us and that is why it is hanging in our home. Our lives have had many seasons, some joyful and some very painful but each and every time and season had a purpose and yours does too. You may not see right now if you are living in the bubble so to speak but someday you will be 61 years old like me and able to look back and see the seasons and it will all make sense to you.

God is like a master craftsman, He is working a tapestry with our lives and only He can see the beauty of the pattern but a lot of the time all we can see is the knots and tangles from underneath His handiwork and it makes no sense to us.

My sweet girl Marlee has her earthly daddy with her now but more importantly they both have their heavenly Father with them. That certainty gives me much hope and I always think about people that do not know the Lord and do not have that hope. How do they make it? I don’t think that I could.

Reach out today for that hope in your life, you will never regret it…….

Ecclesiastes 3:1