Dust Bowl: Slow, Simple and With Love

This morning I caught the end of a story on the Weather Channel.  They had been interviewing an older gentleman about his childhood during the Dust Bowl.  It sounded rough and my heart goes out to our Midwest farmers in the midst of a modern day drought.  He explained the economic hardships for his parents and vividly described the landscape of their farm at the time.  However, he ended  with the most “take-away” part of the story.  He said, “However, life was slow, simple, and we had a lot of love.”  Wow.  Then the weather correspondent ended with a comment that had a wishful tone to it and how he longed for those days. 

How sad that we feel those days are out of reach.  Yes, we live in a fast society where I can type, hit a button, and instantly anyone around the world can read my words on this blog.  It’s quite amazing when you think about it.  And I wouldn’t trade that rapid-fire communication for the days of Pony Express.  However, we also have the power to make our family life slower and simpler.  And it’s certainly in our power to add MUCH more love. 

Summer is half over and I’m glad that we have had a slow, simple summer in our family.  Each kid got one week of VBS camp, we’ll have a family vacation to the beach, and the rest is unplanned days.  Sure, we have day trips, but they’re usually planned the night before.  And yes, there’s lots of time at the pool.  But if tomorrow my kids wake up and say, “let’s go to the rope swing” we can do just that.  We’ll take a lazy stroll down the path that leads to the creek and find other school buddies already jumping off the swing into a muddy creek.  Those are the slow, simple days we create and they’re always filled with love.  At least that’s what I hope my kids remember about their childhood.