For the first time in months I have been sitting at my iMac for the past several hours doing what I love to do, write. I just finished a rough draft of a cute little children’s story with a powerful message titled, Millie Mouse. (I know I’m hung up on mice.)
There are a couple of stories behind this anecdote. Around Christmas time last year a friend of mine sent me a picture that her grandson had taken of a mouse peeping out from the branches of a Christmas tree they had just brought home.
She asked me if I could write a story about the little mouse. My friend gave me all kinds of ideas, but of course her thoughts came from her head and my story had to come from my head/heart. So, my tale barely resembles the ideas she gave me.
Then a few years back another friend of mine asked me if I would write a story for her son and daughter-in-law who were getting ready to tell their young son that he was adopted. I wrote the story, and thought that was that.
When my first friend sent me the picture of the tiny mouse in the Christmas tree all I could think about was that the mouse must be orphaned and right a way the little boy named Billy that I had wrote the adoption story about weighed heavy on my mind. So that’s how the story was created, two ideas combined into one children’s story.
Isn’t that the way of most writings? We observe, mix up our findings, add to and take away, then before we know it a tale is born.
I hope through the words of Millie Mouse, kids who are struggling with living with a new family will one day read the book and know, as long as they are with someone who loves them, and takes care of them then they are with, Family.
On another note things are moving right along with my husband’s new, coming out of retirement, because he is bored, venture.
Byrd’s Branch Campground started the birthing process late last summer. (It takes a while to birth a campground, sort of like an elephant.) One day while strolling over a piece of property we own down along the branch
I made the same request I’d been making for years.
I said, since you’re retired do you think we could clean up along the creek and maybe put in a little picnic area?
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine a casual suggestion turning into a public campground, camp store, and bathhouse. Slowly but surely, and inch by inch the over-grown landscape started to appear out from under the wild Rose bushes and thorn thickets. As the land opened up we realized how pretty the property was and how special it seemed.
Unfortunately the old spring on the property had to be converted into a small pond, but that had turned out all right too and seemed to fit with the campground theme. We named it, The Frog Smooching Pond. (That’s another story.) So here we are, soon to be proprietors of Byrd’s Branch Campground and Camp Store. Call us dreamers, crazy, entrepreneurs or whatever, just call us.
I’d be lying if I said I was not a bit nervous, but then again I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a lot excited. You never know about a project like this, but from the very beginning the husband and I have felt God’s hand over it, and I can’t help but think of the movie, The Field of Dreams, Build it and they will come?
Isaiah 66:2
For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the Lord?
