What a beautiful day! Brilliant sunshine, 72 degrees, bright blue sky. Here in the Midwest, it’s so lush and green with all the rain we get here–a thousand different shades of green, fragrant with damp earth and just-cut alfalfa and lilacs. No matter where we travel, coming home to this verdant place fills me with such a sense of peace.

We live out in the country, and my office windows look out on our wood-fenced corrals and the pastures beyond, where the four horses are grazing, their new, summer-slick coats gleaming in the sunshine. Across the fence, four beautiful, wildly marked paint foals are romping in the neighbor’s pastures–providing no end of amusement to our border collies, who are safely contained on our deck. Elmo, in particular, is a study in total concentration. Head low, ears pricked, body crouched, he stares at them for hours on end, his intensity deepening when they scatter (how dare they!) Our son Brian says we need to buy two sheep, so Elmo can spend his days keeping them together. He is a dog with a mission–but one without a job. His pal Harold, whose grinning pose appears in this post, is a border collie too, but his sole mission is to bark at cats.

Which got me thinking, this morning. Elmo knows what he is and what he needs to do. He never loses sight of that, even though he can’t get close to anything he can herd. What about the rest of us…were you blessed with direction and determination from an early age? Have you followed through? Or have some of us come across our true desires later in life?

My daughter is already determined to be a writer. I have no doubt that she has the drive and ability, and that she can reach her goal if she stays on that course. I didn’t start writing until we had grade-school aged children….and wish I’d started much, much sooner. How about you? What would you love to do? Have you followed your heart? Become what you want to be? Is there something you could do toward that goal now, even if it can’t be achieved any time soon?