The time of Small Beginnings...

I'm the kind of person who likes to dream... and then I like the end results. I don't mind rolling up my sleeves for all the hard work in between, but I'm REALLY not good at the settling and waiting for something to come to fruition. I love the ideas of things, but the patience side of watching something unfold can be exasperating for me. By the time an idea really germinates and starts to sprout I'm onto the next idea... planting a whole new seed.

Except this time, I'm committed. I want to see this through, and I'm learning not to despise this time of small beginnings.

In March while the snow still lay heavy on the sleeping ground and we had no idea what our yard really looked like, I was checking out books from the library, cutting out inspirational pictures and planting the first seeds.

Oh, mercy we are a long way still from ever having the garden I dream about....but the thought of someday is keeping this dream alive....

Ginny's garden from her blog Small Things

But things are definitely taking root around here, stretching their limbs and reaching up toward the sun, and reassuring me that someday there will be a garden around here and it will be delicious and lovely.

As so many people before me, the metaphors of plant life and the garden are not lost on me. Many of you have noted and many of who have written to me personally with your care and concern for my heart and emotions and the place I'm in right now. Thank you deeply, your love and encouragement is a boon to me in what has been a rather dry and desert place these past few months.

Our Sunday morning text yesterday was a rather famous scripture from the book of Jeremiah 29:11+

"For I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper and not to harm  you. Plans to give you a hope and future". 

Amen.

But further up in the same passage the context of those words is found. At the beginning of Jeremiah's prophetic message to the exiled people of Israel, the words are more challenging.

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce."

                                                                                  (Jeremiah 29:5)

Basically God says to the people who just want to go back to the land they called home, to the place of their comfort;

"Settle in" 

"Your here for the long haul"

"engage"

"Make the absolute best of it"

"Flourish where you are"

"Grow where you're planted"

I don't know why God has me in the place I'm at right now, how long I will be here, or when and how I will move on. I've felt like I've been spinning my wheels and not really moving with any momentum. But in the words of this Scripture, I felt the Lord speak to me:

Settle in, grow where you're planted... cause I'm here with you too and you are not alone.

This weekend for Mother's Day, I was given a tree by my husband and children and into the ground it went.

One lone little crab apple  tree, keeping my dream of applesauce and crab apple jelly alive for the next few years until it keeps it's promise and produces fruit.

The blooms are just precious, and years from now perhaps I'll sit in it's shade looking out at my garden and remembering how when I was younger and more impulsive I had to force myself to sit still and just wait. I had to settle in and be patient with the ground in which I was placed. I had to hunker down and learn to stretch my limbs from the place I was planted. I had to learn to make something beautiful from what felt like dead seeds pushed into the mud.

Even now as the days begin to stretch out with sun and warmth and I feel the first shoots of my stronger self pushing up out of all the dry earth I've been buried under, I am learning to love the time of small beginnings, the time of now.

As eager as I am to leave behind the things that cause pain and grief, God whispers to me "slow down", "Settle in" "We may be here a while"

But while we are here, oh how we will grow....

Thank you for sharing this journey with me...it blesses me more than you know.