The heat seems to have slowed the growth of everything in my yard except the weeds.  I planted ornamental grasses again this year. Nothing growing there. The hostas are turning brown, the ivy is at a stand-still. However, the weeds are thriving!

Once again, I am amazed at the resilience of weeds. They grow unwanted, untended and with great vigor. Since I am not a gardener and cannot recognize a weed from a healthy plant, I tend to let everything grow until I can see what it will become.  By doing this, I’ve learned that some of those things that I thought were weeds actually were beautiful plants.  Sorry to say, some of those things in my garden that I had great hope for, turned out to be great disappointments.

My yard is such a great mirror of my spiritual and home life. Those things that need to be removed – left unattended grow at a great rate (especially in times of spiritual dryness). Things that I want to grow only do so if I nurture them.

I have one pot of beautiful flowers sitting on my front porch. I’ve fed them, I water them daily and I pull off the spent blooms. Sometimes, I can only concentrate on one area of need at a time. I pour my energy into one area of growth while I watch the weeds and pull them out as soon as I recognize them for what they are.

What’s growing in your life today?

I have lived a blessed life, largely due to God, and my family. A quote I find particularly inspirational was noted by Allan Bloom: “Education is the movement from darkness to light.” I grew up in a God-fearing, loving, communicative, ambitious family, who always inspired me to move forward in my calling.

I believe my calling, specifically, is to reflect back to others what God has given to me. As such, I find myself doing it in the best way I know how – by using my almost-completed Master’s degree in Mental Health Counseling to minister to those who hurt. My homeschooling background set me on a path for an aptitude of high achievement. However, I firmly believe that God and my parents made sure that I had not only a sense of achievement academically, but also a firmly entrenched desire to give back to those in need.

I believe that we can never fully understand what drives a person unless we at least take a small look at what molded them when they were young. I believe, as Mr. Bloom’s quotation exemplifies, that my being Homeschooled did in fact set me on the path, of moving from the dark into the light. In fact, it moved beyond that – I have seen the Light of God; and I have obtained the divine calling to reflect that very Light on to others. It is this fact, I believe, that makes life worth living.

By Meg

“Gardens are a form of autobiography,” Sydney Eddison

I wonder if you read that quote and thought (as I did), ‘If that is true, then my life is a mess!’ I am NOT a gardener by any stretch of the imagination. I really don’t like worms and bugs. I know that they have their place in our world, but I don’t want their place to be on me! So, my gardening expertise is pulling weeds and trimming bushes. Until recently…

I was reading a devotional that was written by an avid gardener. He talked about the need to cut back good plants. It made me think about the growth that has been happening on a hill at my church. Somehow the lot has fallen to me to weed this hill. So I gear myself up with everything I will need to keep the critters off of me. Tall red rubber boots (may as well cause people to smile when they see me), long jeans tucked into the boots, long sleeved shirt and rubber-coated gardening gloves. As I survey the hill, I see a lot of good plants running amuck. These vines have overgrown the whole hillside. The only things that poke through are some very prickly weeds. I wonder if the good plants should be cut back.

I begin my plan of attack on my knees. I may as well pray while I’m down here! No sense in having a bad attitude when there’s a job to be done.

As I start to hack away at the vines, I discover that there are some evergreen bushes under them. Surprised, I chop and pull at dozens and dozens of the vines to find more beautiful evergreens.  Who knew?

I immediately saw the analogy to my own life. I have a lot of very good things in my life. Now and then, a weed pokes through that I attempt to pull up by the root. Meanwhile, some other “very good things” are getting buried and are suffering.

As mom’s, we have many good things in our lives. There are some that I prefer to concentrate on and others I choose to ignore. By ignoring some, my life gets out of balance and some very good things soon disappear. If I’m not careful those good things can suffocate and die.

What am I allowing to grow in my life? Am I working on my relationship with the Lord? Am I being the woman of God that my husband and family need me to be? Am I ignoring some things because I don’t want to deal with the ‘pests’ that are there?

I doubt that I’ll ever be a gardener. But I am working on those things that are growing in my life…on my knees…pulling weeds…and cutting back on the unnecessary.

Our UPS man is like a member of our family.  He has been coming to our place, rain or shine, twice a day for the last 7 years.  When Elijah was born last year, he bought Eli a UPS outfit as a gift.  This is Eli meeting UPS at the loading doc.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. For some of us, it will mean getting hand-made cards and flowers picked from the yard. Perhaps for you, it’s breakfast in bed or a day off from dishes. For every woman, it’s a day filled with memories of our own growing up years that can cause us to smile, or cause us to shed a tear.

For me, it’s a little of both. This year, I find myself thinking about heaven because that’s where my mother is. She literally gave her heart to the Lord on her death bed and this is her first Mother’s Day in heaven.

A book that my daughter and I read together many years ago comes to mind at this time. In The Last Battle, C. S. Lewis paints a beautiful picture of Heaven in a section called “Farewell to Shadowlands.”

“’There was a real railway accident,’ said Aslan softly. ‘Your father and mother and all of you are – as you used to call it in the Shadowlands – dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.’”

Then C. S. Lewis concludes with this wonderful paragraph:

And as He spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all    lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.

We are all writing our stories that will live in the memories of our children. As YOU write your own line on your “title page” this Mother’s Day, may it be one that will cause your children to smile for years to come.

A bomb blew up a van across the street from my house last week. I am still trying to absorb that fact. A literal bomb! You must be wondering where I live. Am I writing from a war-torn country? From a crime-infested city? No, I live in a little country village of about 5,000 in western NY.

The van was parked in front of a house where two guys and two girls lived. Shortly after they moved in last fall, this became a party house. Many nights, the activity would spill onto the street as fights broke out. I later learned that these were fight-clubs and they liked to fight. Imagine that! The drug activity there was not hidden, but openly used during the afternoon on their front porch as they waved at those who walked by.

I often prayed for my neighbors. I asked the Lord to help me to reach them – or to move them out! Meanwhile, I went on with my busy life and waved to my neighbors as I went on my way. And then, the bomb, and an amazing fire in the middle of the night. Within days, one by one, they slunk away.

I missed my opportunity to reach these lost neighbors.

I’ve often felt that this is the case for parents who send their children to school. Moms and dads are very busy doing good things. They wave to their children as they send them off to school. Meanwhile, opportunities are missed.

Homeschooling gave me countless hours of teachable moments with my daughter. I loved the time we had to talk about things that were on her heart. If she were sent away to school, there would be others that would mold her and plant things in her life that may or may not be what we believed. I was so glad that I never had to regret missing opportunities with her.