Skip to main content

Cultivating Gardens... & Thankfulness

So this year the girls and I planted a garden.  A very small, raised garden.  Not because I have a green thumb, but because two of my littles told me it was their New Year’s resolution.  I can't go around shattering babies' dreams just because I hate to sweat- and I do hate to sweat.  I’m not really good at growing things (except kids I hope!), but I am very good at shopping!  And so once I got in the mode of buying plants, I’ve had a hard time stopping.  Now my tiny little slab of concrete that we call our back patio is covered in green!  Strawberry plants, herbs, and a few blooming things.  To my husband’s delight, even our beat up grill is covered in living things right now!                                           





A sweet friend gave me a beatuiful magazine called "Eden & Vine" whose tag line is cultivating beauty and truth.  I’ve been reading it out on my back porch with my coffee early before the day gets crazy, and an article about cultivating joy got my wheels turning.  Joy is intentional the author says.  So often I am caught in a cycle of thinking how I can improve things or situations or the little people in my life.  I am a task oriented person and my mind is always swirling with what needs to be done.  I was born a “Martha” through and through.

And sometimes all of this brings anxiety and stress, but mostly it creates in me a general feeling of discontent.  Because in this world the things around us can always be improved.  My parents had a guest this past weekend from across the ocean, and they said he spoke of being content.  It grabbed me, and I’ve been pondering that word… turning it over and over in my mind.  And while I was on a little walk (carrying my coffee and being careful not to sweat early this a.m.), I heard the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit in my heart highlighting to me the remedy for my angst- thankfulness.  Thankfulness.  Not just at Thanksgiving, but day in and day out.  Grabbing those thoughts that lend themselves to discontent and replacng them with a breath prayer of thankfulness for what I have been given.

As I wrapped up my walk and decided to come write, I headed back towards the front door.  And there on the front porch was something I had missed earlier.  The most precious note left in chalk by tiny, little fingers.  She didn’t tell me it was there.  And the timing was perfect.  It was a note of thankfulness. For. Me.  The mom who also sees so clearly all of my own pitfalls…  there was one of my littles practicing the very thing that God had just told me I needed.  And the second part of her note really hammered it home.  “This is the happy place!”  Wow!  Don’t tell me God doesn’t speak to us through little children!







The place of thankfulness is the happy place.  Will we find it today?  Will we stand back and look at all the growth that needs to happen and all the gaps that need to be filled in or will we look closely, carefully at the tiny petals of flowering beauty all around us?  We can choose thankfulness!  And Joy!


This little butterfly bush- like our lives-  leaves a lot to be desired...

But if we are intentional about looking closer, it's such a different perspective!

And thank you to my friend who gifted me
this pot of joy for Makiah's 13th birthday!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Deafening Silence

In a single second my life has been radically altered.  My precious gift from God, sweet Makiah Kaitlyn, has gone to be with Jesus long before her time.  I know in my heart that she is happy, but my arms are so empty... my house so dreadfully quiet.  I feel at times that a horrible blackness has enveloped me.  I feel as though my insides are screaming.  I am clawing and fighting to break out of this torturous body- to escape from this oppressive reality, but I cannot escape.  The dark anguish leaps on me again and again.  It sits on my chest and presses against my very life breath.  My heart feels utterly crushed and broken- pummeled into a thousand pieces.  Life as I knew it has been shattered and the shards that are left are painful and sharp.  Cutting me as I try to walk through them.  This is the valley of the shadow of death.  How dark is that shadow! Her room is perfectly untouched.  All of the dolls in her dollhou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Toes

Outside the sky is grey and dreary.  I feel it should rain torrents today.  I think the whole earth should cry out in grief.  I feel my heart pounding in my head.  My eyes will barely open, and I think no more tears can possibly come.  Maybe I will stand in the rain and borrow the tears from the sky. I look down at sparkly pink toes, and they are lonely.  Makiah, our last Sunday together you spent the morning in bed with Mommy (because I am on bed rest).  We ate fruit loops and snuggled.  We practiced drawing your letters and painted our fingers and toes.  You wanted rainbow toes, but I didn't have the colors with me.  I promised I'd paint you rainbow toes later.  Once we were all pink you said, "I got an idea!  Let's put sparklies over the pink, and you have to do it, too, Mommy, so we can be twins!"  You are such a princess!  So pink toes became sparkly toes.  We giggled and hugged and admired our matching fe...
1 comment
Read more

Wells of Living Water

My eyes filled with tears when my mother-n-law told me of her friend's idea.  This sweet lady, whom I've never met, wanted to know if she could do something special in honor of Makiah.  She said God had put it on her heart to start a well project for her.  She would sell "living water well charms" through Operation Blessing International to raise money to build a well for underprivelaged children in a poverty stricken country.  She said when 600 charms have been purchased, a well with a permanent plaque would be built to commemorate Makiah's life.  Not only was this an amazing idea, it was linked to my daughter's heart in a way that shocked me... What this thoughtful lady could not have known was that only 2 weeks before the accident, Makiah came into the kitchen on a Sunday morning carrying her whole piggy bank.  She told me she wanted to take it all to "give to the kids who need clean water."  The preschool class at church had been raising mon...
Post a Comment
Read more