Posts

When the Vines Choke Out Life

Image
  I am not gardener. I've mentioned multiple times that a black thumb or green thumb are not my issue. I am a smother plant mother. I see a plant and try too hard to love it, leading to overwatering, too much sun, or too much shade. This brings me to my current predicament. My husband brought in a landscape/tree removal company to clear overgrowth around our property. After two days of chainsaws, weed wackwackers, a woodchipper, our property has increased considerably. Here lies the dilemma. Along the path of chainsaw destruction is piles of undergrowth leaves and sticks. My husband works during the day and I am off briefly for summer break, so the task fell to me to remove the debris. Yay! As I tugged and pulled, my rake continued to snag on the vines and brambles that had wrapped itself around all plant life. It wasn't as noticeable until the tree people removed the overgrowth. The landscapers told us that unless we treat the parasitic vines and weeds with spray regularly, t...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Does Freedom Look Like?

Image
  As our country celebrated the 250th anniversary of independence, something stirred in my mind. On the Fourth of July, the remembrance of independence was ushered in with patriotic songs, red, white, and blue everything, and lots and lots of fireworks. I was able to sit on my front porch and watch a fireworks display the equivalent of a small city's. The pounding of artillery and bursts of light surrounded our house as the acrid smell  of smoke lingered in a soft haze. For many, this represented freedom. However, true freedom looks very different. When God sent His son, Jesus, to this earth, it was not to grant us the ability to do whatever we want to do. It was for freedom. Let me explain. When Adam chose to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he didn't need to know what good was. He literally was able to be in the presence of God's goodness every single day. He wanted to experience and know the evil part. He wanted to decide for himself what wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Out of the Muck

Image
  My husband sees himself as a bit of a farmer, so when the opportunity arose to get chickens, he jumped at it. I, however, am not a farm girl. When I was young, I grew up helping my grandparents with gardens and farm-like, country things. As an adult, I gladly left the farm life behind. My husband happily pulled me back into farm things. Enter chickens. We put together a coop and became chicken people, again. I say again because we have done this a few times in our marriage. The issue with raising chickens is the poo. Chickens are quite messy. Unfortunately, the never-ending rain has not helped the situation. After a month of rain almost every day, we were practically tossing a coin over who had to wade through four inches of muck and crawling into the laying house to get the eggs. It was disgusting. We were so excited when we found a chicken tractor that allowed us to always keep our chickens on clean grass while accessing the eggs outside the chicken  house. This is when w...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Father's Love

Image
  This weekend was very monumental for us. On Father's Day weekend, we watched one of our daughter's marry her high school sweetheart. It was a beautiful wedding all throughout the day, but one moment brought tears to my eyes. I watched the father/daughter dance. It was a very emotional moment of seeing the love and pride in her father's eyes and the joy on her face. It brought to my mind our relationship with God. Zephaniah 3:17 NIV  The Lord your God is with you,   the Mighty Warrior who saves.  He will take great delight in you;   in his love he will no longer rebuke you,    but will rejoice over you with singing.”   Some translations say, " He will dance over you with singing. " I picture that moment with my husband and dau ghter. God's love for you is so great that He, your Heavenly Father, delights in you. He is not a God who is uninvolved or only planning wrath for you. He loves you so much that He rejoices when you spend time with Him, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What's Behind That Door? When God Says No.

Image
When my children were little, I never had a chance to use the restroom without one of my toddlers wandering in to visit me. After they grew up, I falsely thought I would finally have quiet time to myself in the bathroom. Now, my kids' dogs have taken up where my children left off. They love following me into the bathroom. If I'm taking a shower, they try to drink water that leaks between the shower door and the water guard. One Saturday, as I was cleaning the shower with a caustic cleaner, I worried that the dogs would try to drink the chemicals in the shower, so I shut the door. Everytime I attempted to go in the bathroom, my daughter's dog tried to sneak in beyond the cracked door. No matter how many times I warned him, he still wanted to go to an unsafe place. Isn't that like us at times? God warns us not to do something, yet we still press to do it anyway. God sees beyond the door to the danger our choices can bring us- broken relationships, addictions, or damage ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Broken People

Image
 As I sat in my house tonight, I heard my daughter yelling from my front yard, "Mom!" After a few screams and I still hadn't appeared, she progressed to calling my cell phone. As she quickly beckoned me outside, I found her standing over something moving in the beam of her cell phone light. As I approached, I saw that it was a fairly large bat with a broken wing. We were arguing over how to tell if it was alive while keeping my cat from feasting on it. I had the brilliant idea to scoot it with a dustpan from my broom. As I slowly lowered the dustpan under the bat, it began to flop towards my daughter and me. My husband drove up to both of us flapping our arms and squealing like the slugs from Flushed Away . We left my son and husband to handle the hurt bat and gladly took refuge in the house. Have you ever heard the phrase, "hurt people, hurt people?" In ministry, I've found that broken people tend to strike out at those trying to help them, much like the b...
Post a Comment
Read more

Flirting With Danger

Image
  As I walked my dog at the back of our property, I noticed a plant growing in the corner- a Yucca plant. This plant takes me back to my childhood. My mother has never been a big gardener. I definitely inherited that trait from her. I think plants probably weep when they enter my home, knowing their fate. Because my mother struggled with growing things, she chose hardy plants that could survive almost anything with little attention. She created what I called, "the garden of death." Inside this round garden in the middle of her lawn was a set of rose bushes, several cactus plants, and two really large Yucca plants, all among a bed of decorative rocks. Although everything was beautiful and flowering, it was also thorny and sharp. My preteen brother had the wonderful idea to play daredevil and ride his Huffy bike and the circle of death. He started slow and began to pick up speed with each revolution.  When he reached maximal speed, he lost control and crashed directly in the p...
Post a Comment
Read more