Just for You

Here are the lyrics from a song from my soon-to-be-released CD, "Putting the Past to Pasture." It's a true story my friends Donna and Deb told me about their parents, the Reverend Luther and Janice Larsen. It's called "Proverbs Three Five."

My Daddy was a farmer and in my boyhood so was I In a corner of Montana where the wheat fields meet the sky When I finished high school it was time to find my name Life's just not a straight line in the amber waves of grain

I longed to be a preacher and that takes education So I said goodbye Montana and left Daddy in the field He only asked for one thing, to come back every summer To help him bring the crop in, and so we made the deal

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Don’t rely on your own understanding

Well I loved Minnesota and studying the Gospel Singing every Sunday in an a capella choir One day I met an alto, and when we looked at each other She became my everything, and I her heart’s desire We married in the springtime and began a different life I was meant to be that preacher, and she a preacher’s wife We found a verse in Proverbs and decided we would keep it To help us get through anything in happiness or strife

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Don’t rely on your own understanding

Each and every summer I would go back to Montana I can’t say I was happy there, with Janice left behind Sitting on that tractor seat, my heart in Minnesota I steered her straight with muscle while I traveled in my mind One day I saw some bluebells on a fence line on the south end I picked a few and mailed them off to Janice the next day Just a little token so she’d know that I was lonesome And that come September I’d be back to stay

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Don’t rely your own understanding

The years came tumbling after as we grew our little family The children came, the children went, we gave them all our best After fifty seven years together Janice got the fever It broke my soul in pieces when we laid her to rest I could not bear to go through all those dresser drawers and cupboards My daughter came to organize what Janice left behind She opened that old Bible to a page somewhere in Proverbs To a spray of dried up bluebells and a passage underlined.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart Don’t rely on your own understanding