Heartbeat on the Prairie

14/12/2025

Sometimes the world gets loud, and it becomes easy to feel overwhelmed.

I have to remind myself I'm not responsible for the whole world. Only my corner of it.

My house, my family, my animals, my friends, my community, the things and people right in front of me. Those are my responsibility.

And they're manageable.

We are so connected to every horrible thing that happens thanks to the internet, but we're simply not meant to carry it all.

It's more than enough to shoulder up under the hurts in my local community, to support where I can, and to pray and trust God with the rest.

When we all focus on lighting our little corner to the best of our ability, that's how we become a beacon on a hill.

13/12/2025

https://heartbeatontheprairie.substack.com/p/job-didnt-know

"When Job dared to question why, God didn’t tell him. God didn’t explain that his quiet faith in the face of all the power the enemy had to leverage against him put the adversary to shame. Nor did God tell him that his story, his heart in the face of his suffering, “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD,” would become the blueprint for generations of God’s children as they endured tribulation and hardship.

"What did God give Job when he asked why this had happened to him?"

Hello, sweet friends.

23/11/2025

Just saying.

23/11/2025

Fellas, I'm no marriage counselor but have you tried cranking up "There She Is" by The Tuten Brothers and spinning her around the kitchen a little?

22/11/2025

❤ Dear Cowgirl

22/11/2025

Fall means moves to winter pasture.
Preparation for snow and inclement weather.
Finding water sources that won't freeze.
Counting the hay in the hay yard and running the calculations.

Sometimes I think our spirits need the same preparation for the long, cold winter.

I feel the shorter days and loss of sunshine in physical exhaustion even when I'm not doing anything that should make me tired. But I'm making a list of winter projects: reorganizing, purging, and hopefully having time to get together with friends to just sit down and hang out.

The best friends are the ones you still like even after a hard ride (shout out to Naccona for riding with me today) and some of our best friends became friends in the working side by side through blood and sweat to get a job done. In summer, we socialize in work.

This year, I want to make winter the season we socialize in relaxation, which is a word that's entirely too foreign for many of us.

From a practical standpoint, how are you combating the winter blues?

07/11/2025

I try not to romanticise the perfect Bible reading time or writing time, because with 3 kids and 4 dogs and 2 cats it rarely happens like this, and that's okay, because the chaos is a gift. But every once in a while, I get a quiet, misty morning with good coffee and cows out my window and a plethora of ideas for the blank page, and my soul sings.

I'm working on expanding the Subscriber Library for paid subscribers. Today's project is on Leviticus, and I'm still working on the Study Guide for the Shorter Westminster Catechism. (I had to call in an expert opinion from my pastor Grandpa, because I was all the way stumped for a while, but happily, I can continue on now.)

Life is crazy and busy and anxiety-inducing, but there's still these good, sweet, quiet moments, even in the midst of the hullabaloo.

05/11/2025

New post on Substack.

On how we trust God without shirking responsibility.

28/10/2025

"The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an sbsolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice, you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man." -- C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity"

24/10/2025

The most peaceful sound I know. This is the thing little boys imagine when they dream of being a cowboy, and the fulfillment of countless unspoken prayers within my heart.

24/10/2025

The most peaceful sound I know.

24/10/2025

This afternoon, I found myself wishing I’d remembered to grab a pair of hobbles so I could hobble my horse.

Hobbles are a sometimes controversial tool, whereby you “hobble” a horse’s front legs, with enough slack between the two that he can stand comfortably, but not so much that he can take any large strides, thus keeping him in a small area, even without a fence or standing tied (so long as he is trained to them…otherwise they just go rabbit hopping across the prairie and you’re stuck walking.)

I could write you a treatise on why I think it’s actually imperative that a horse at least know how to stand hobbled, but that’s not the point. The point is that I think hobbles are often misunderstood because they are a bit paradoxical, because to me they represent both security and freedom.

Security, because the hobbles say “stand just here. This is your place in the world. You are safe here. You are under my care and I will protect you. Don’t worry.” Freedom, because they also say “you need not stand tied with your nose to the fence; no, move, eat, and enjoy your autonomy, and your security.”

And isn’t God’s law much the same? Oh, it sounds overbearing, perhaps cruel, even, at first glance. But like hobbles, when we begin to dig deeper, and are appropriately trained to it, the law becomes a gift; security that says “this is the boundary. This is your place in the world. This is how you move through it peacefully” and also freedom, because it does, indeed, say “move. Enjoy the things within the boundary. And enjoy the security that living within the law brings.”