So, here it is a rainy mid-morning, and I have slid back into my camouflage pajama pants and Doctor Who t-shirt (yeah, homeschooling!) after barn chores, now occupying myself with girly things such as throwing together collages of my favorite clothes. These are all taken from my Pinterest board, Dress and Hair Tastes.
Can we all just go back this era?
With maybe some Medieval thrown in there as well?
My hair is currently almost to my waist. If it were straightened, I think it would be there. But I keep it braided 90% of the time, so it's always more or less wavy. :)
And if we could all bring back vintage footwear like these, I might actually be more into shoes. Sigh!
I have several different tastes that shift with the mood of a certain day or season. I love vintage above all, but country and plaid get me all the time, colonial or pioneer, and Medieval catches me up in a whole other world.
Now, I will go spend this day reading Emma by Jane Austen and awaiting a visit from my good friend, Aleena~
I've heard it said that a clean desk is the sign of a messy career.
Well, I think that a perfect garden is the sign of a frazzled mind. You constantly go outside to tend to something you do have control over, you pick and toss weeds like you wish you could pick and throw problems, and you arrange things in perfect order the way you would if life were so easily disciplined.
And it pays off. And gives you problem-solving practice. And offers you the solace of quiet to fume, sing, or pray.
"I come to the garden alone..."
Praise God, my garden is prospering. Yesterday was another rainy day, and this morning when I went out to inspect, weeds were not the only tiny newcomers popping out of the soil. Now I can say that absolutely everything I have planted has sprouted and is growing.
Even the phlox I transplanted from the side of the corn field have hit their prime. The mullein is growing taller as I pick off the under-leaves that have grown brown and shriveled, and the self-seeding dill continues to outgrow its box.
Today Mama and I went to Pine View Greenhouse in Richfield, an extension of an Amish farm, and bought flowers. I love snapdragons. So much. Phlox are my favorite Spring flower. I'll say snapdragons are my favorite Summer-Fall flowers. This is the third year that the ones we planted one year in the barn flower garden have re-seeded themselves to come back in copious amounts. I'm always picking grass sprouts out of their midst, and there will be a bounty of them again this Summer. But I got some that were already flowered for my backyard garden. The softest pink, pretty peach, and bright yellow. Also, alyssum. In honor of my little goat (whom I will be seeing in less than a week!) I've chosen Alyssum as her name, after the soft white color of her coat and her green-yellow eyes.
Already, this "giant lily-of-the-valley," as Laurel and I refer to is as, is going to seed. But it has been so pretty! Especially after being rained upon or watered, with all the tiny droplets glittering on the leaves and dripping from the little globes. (I just discovered that it's really called Solomon's Seal.)
I've marked every row with a titled tongue depressor. :P
And my Pablo and Mantilia lettuces are sewn in alternating rows, striping their whole pallet in green and red.
I have Scarlet Nantes and Danvers carrots planted in the main soil of my garden. They're the carrots I've always had success with in the past. Carrots, I must say, are my favorite thing to grow. Harvesting them is loads of fun: discovering the ones that have decided to twist around their neighbors, or finding the biggest and fattest of all.
Along with them, I have my New Zealand spinach. I grew this last year, and loved it. While it is sporadic in how it sprouts- what with having many seeds that seem to not plan on coming up, but then appearing a week or two later- it tasted much better than any lettuce I've ever tried. Last year I would go out to the garden each morning to pick some for my sandwich to take to lunch at work.
The lettuces I mentioned I am trying for the first time, having carefully read their descriptions in the Seed Savers catalog. Usually, lettuce turns out bitter and/or gritty around here... hopefully that changes this time. These are supposed to be "sweet", with one crisp and the other soft.
Also among the rows in the pallets are my herbs:
Chives, cinnamon basil, globe basil, oregano, parsley, catnip, lemon balm, thyme, and culinary sage. I'm excited! I'll be doing a lot of research on drying herbs and saving seeds this time around.
The marigolds guard the garden faithfully, placed all around the circumference of the stone border. I've noticed something has been turning a few of their leaves dark and nibbling them away. Either it's bugs, or a rabbit. But nothing has entered the garden and bothered its contents. I'm looking into protecting the marigolds, but at least they are doing their job in keeping pests out of the greens.
The bee balm is coming back from last year, much bigger. It will have pretty dark red blossoms come mid-Summer. Here you can see it accompanied by pink morning glories Mama planted. The stone path is a project of Emma's we've both been working on: turning up the dirt between and around the playhouse and the apple tree, mulching, and planting flowers along the path.
Emma's been extremely creative with her apple tree garden. The signs she's painted are so colorful, and she even painted rocks different colors with the titles of vegetables written on them for Mama to mark her own garden rows.
Yes, the gardening is abundant... and very fulfilling.
It feels wonderful to have the dirt under my feet and staining my hands. Seeing life erupt from the soil and grow with an eager will of its own. Let it continue to prosper!!
And I couldn't resist the other day: buying seeds for rosemary and broccoli... so those have to get plated tomorrow, too. :3
I finished planting my garden about a week ago, and already I see most of my seedlings springing to life. This year I wanted to try my hand at an assortment of herbs, so I took the wooden pallet route and now have three of them set around the rest of my vegetable garden. I also have a section for flowers. (Yes, a whole post dedicated to that coming shortly- can't give too much away yet!)
In addition to all the outdoor and barn work going on around here, and the pleasant seasonal chaos of this particular time of year, I am getting a goat! Two goats, actually- but the baby one is mine. (Again, I'll wait on details- spoilers!)
My goal this year has been to get a lot of practice in on sewing, gardening, baking, and such. And I've made progress... but as you might expect, it all puts me in a kind of mood... one that Pinterest can portray pretty accurately.
So I put together a few collages out of my Homesteading and Housekeeping board.
And very soon I will have pictures and posts about my own little homesteading and housekeeping projects.
As is my specialty, I have been blog procrastinating again.
This reminds me of something Emma and I were saying a few days ago. I believe it went something like... "The most expert procrastinator in the world would be someone who is constantly busy- they've managed to procrastinate on procrastination itself." :P
But I decided at the beginning of June to take a complete break from Facebook. My days have been full and busy since, and it truly has felt good. While non-internet things have been my priority because of that, I haven't done much online except email... and a tad of Pinterest. But I think it would be a good time to get back into blogging! I do have some posts on my mind, so hopefully now I will be able to sit down and write out and organize all these lengthy tidbits. ;)
The view from the field on Cedarville and Birdseye Roads when we took a walk yesterday.
Tonight I came to a realization that has been a long time in coming.
And it's not even something that I don't already know by heart. In fact, I think it is something I knew so well that it faded to the background, and became taken for granted.
I am forgiven. Completely, utterly, totally Forgiven, by the Great Holy Creator, by His Son Jesus.
He is the ultimate giver of forgiveness. His is the only kind that truly matters. To seek any other kind is so ludicrous. How can we do that? What drives us to seek more than what is already so much more than enough? So far beyond amazing and more than we could ever hope to earn? Given freely by God?
But we do. Or at least, I do.
I forget that Jesus forgave me, forgives me, and will always forgive me. That He does not look at me the way I tend to look at myself. And because of that, I should not look at myself as the wretch I often feel like. When I refuse to acknowledge His forgiveness, I'm saying His view is not good enough. I'm saying "That's alright if you forgive me, God, but I don't think I can." That's prideful. To think you're either not good enough or too good for Him. Either way, you're contradicting God, and what He says is pure and perfect. Like Peter did, actually.
Let me explain.
I have always had very low self-esteem. I never saw myself as much. I got told a lot of things that enforced these feelings. I compared myself to others I deemed better than myself, and saw getting all the attention, and I valued my own character less and less. I'm not trying to start a pity party here, it's just a fact. It's funny... something can be so very small, something someone says can slip from them just casually without a thought. They never know how it will affect another person, that it might stay with them for the rest of their life. This has only taught me to be careful with my own words. Because I hate hurting people.
And yet that is what I did.
In the last year of my life, a lot of things have happened. Some things have been just so, so amazing and beautiful and beyond my wildest hopes. I love my life. God is showing me just how wonderful His plans are by letting me see my Future unfold.
Unfortunately, it seems to be human nature to let the clouds blot out the biggest rays of sunshine in our daily lives.
Besides my days of sunshine and a truly mind-blowing sweet sixteenth year, naturally some of these darker days also occurred. I watched some life-long friendships become very damaged by some stupid, thoughtless words. I've dished out hurt, and taken my own fair share. It was all egged on either by jealousy, or by spur-of-the-moment frustration, or pent-up emotions, or even irrational excitement. It is so easy to get carried away.
There was a boy involved: the first one to ever take some remote form of interest in me. There was another girl involved. There were two older women involved. There were whole families involved, in the end. That's what happens in these instances. Nothing ever stays small. And I believe in this case, it was the smaller issues that just gave vent to the bigger ones that had been bubbling under the surface for years. They had to blow sometime, and they did.
To make a long story short, I said some things about someone to someone else, because of premature trust, frustration, and the immature desire to impress. Looking back on it, those things were so not me. But I did them. Because I am like anybody else: I make mistakes. And often the same ones over and over.
The whole situation ended up involving way more people than in the beginning. It left me feeling guilt and horror at what I had done. Which, yes, may actually have been just a small thing when looked at by an outsider, but to me it wasn't. And to the other parties involved, it sure wasn't.
I prayed a lot during that time. And I have to say that without God and a very close friend, I would have completely broken apart during that time. I nearly did anyway.
I apologized to the person I had wronged. It was all I could really do. You can't undo history and take back words spoken. As much as I wanted to.
You can't wind the clock back ten years and change a choice you made that would lead up to this point and make everything go wrong. As much as I wanted to.
But, you know, now I am actually thankful for that, because without that one little "wrong choice" way back in the past, I wouldn't be exactly where I am now, in the right place.
But in the long run, my point here is that even now, over a year later, I am carrying around guilt and anger at myself. I see myself as a terrible person. I feel like a failure, because no matter how hard I try, I always find myself saying something I regret, or feeling an emotion I wish I never had capability of feeling. I just wish things could be the way they used to be. I wish I could drop all the resentment I feel, and that I could make everyone around me do the same.
But the truth is, tonight, I remembered I am forgiven. And I need to forgive myself. No matter who on this earth has or has not forgiven me, it doesn't matter. It will only make me wilt and wither as a person to carry that burden of guilt and regret around on my shoulders for the rest of my life. I need to stop worrying.
I am free to struggle through this.
But I am not struggling to be free.
So why struggle at all?
I'm giving it up, to God.
As I was thinking about this whole situation, that song The Struggle by Tenth Avenue North came to me, and when I went to listen to it, I found it relates even better to my situation than I originally thought.
I was talking to my sister tonight, telling her how I felt. It was then that it came to me that all of the things I am feeling: the unforgiveness of myself, the despair, the anger, the guilt.... these are lies. These are things someone that is NOT God is pushing back on me, reminding me of, whispering nastily in my ear. Why? Why attack me with my past? Why now? Because that is what Satan does. He loves to wear you down with regret, to make you forget and doubt the most precious and basic gift Jesus bought: FORGIVENESS! For me.
Satan will do anything to steal our happiness. And I think he will only attack those he sees as the biggest threat, the ones he sees as getting too close to God for his comfort.
So I'm saying no.
I will not believe the lies. I will not live in the past.
I will live for God, and for the moment of now. I will accept His gift with honor and use it to the fullest.
As I am forgiven, I will forgive.
As I am loved, I will love.
I am new.
Every day.
A new start, another chance.
Another step in the building, as my God shapes me and makes me, and calls me His work of art.
I have wanted to go through the definition of Love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 for some time, and really dissect each meaning. I'm not writing sermons, just small anecdotes for each subject, expressing my views and finding a way to write with them.
Another exercise I would like to take up is writing small persuasive paragraphs inspired by many songs I hear on the radio daily. They make me think. I'd like to share the songs and do a short write-up along with them. We'll see where it goes.
But for now, let's begin with the first installment of Red Grace: Love...
Love is... Patient.
We tend to assign two meanings to the term being patient: 1) the ability to wait, and 2) the absence of frustration. In the case of waiting, patience refers not only to the act itself, but also to the attitude with which one does so. To wait with patience is to remain in a state of peace, of humility, of calm, and total surrender to the cause... the absence of worry and the presence of faith- Faith in God and trust in His plan and timing. The spirit of Patience is the opposite of haste and the embrace of peace. It is truly one of the ultimate tests, and the greatest element in life to direct our focus to the bigger picture, to God and His purpose for your story, rather than your current circumstances.
As for our second definition, Patience is the ability to remain placid and understanding in frustrating situations. Patience is perseverance under pressure, and the willingness to do so. Coping with opposition, instructing a frustrated child, remaining willing to listen and understand when a person or situation completely confuses you: these are times our patience is tried, and times when this fruit- or the lack there of- in a person is most evident. Patience is the drive to teach, to learn, and to wait, all with meekness and humility.
But there is a third definition we may overlook in this case, because our minds are focusing on the verbal part of being patient. What about beingapatient? When you are a patient, you are under the care of a doctor or healer, someone who is looking after you and nursing you back to health. Your body is being strengthened and rested, being prepared for the return to health and every-day life.
When you are patient, you become a patient. God is working in you to heal your hurts, to bind your wounds, and to prepare you for what is ahead. Unlike a physical doctor, you are not being mended back to how you were: you are being built up even better than before. You are surrendered to His care, to let yourself be molded and shaped and infused with all you will need in the journey ahead. There are many things over that next hill in the road, and we must admit to ourselves that we can never fully know or be completely prepared when we rely on our own knowledge and strength. There is always a way that we deem right, that makes sense to us, and it is often our downfall, for we make no allowance for the bumps and wrinkles that we did not plan on. When something goes wrong, we are thrown completely off track and search for someone to blame. And that is usually God.
Patience is an element of Love. God is Love. And, oh, how patient He really is with us. Can we not stop and grant Him the same courtesy? The results are only good.
We should to be patient, not rush ahead. We should be patients, committed to God's care and fashioning so that every step of the way is guided by Him.
In some versions of the Bible, instead of "Love is Patient," we hear "Charity {Love} suffereth long". Patience is endurance. It is denial of self and strife, it is the "no" to the ill urges of the world, the personal desire of satisfaction in the coveted moment of NOW. It is self-control and sacrifice of "my way".
What else do we often see defined as sacrifice? Love is Sacrifice. Like a math problem, we work the numbers backwards to make sure our result connected with our original value. It works right back around in a circle, a proof. It checks out!
Patience- true patience- is thus an act of true Love.
Well, that came out longer than I intended.
Please leave me a comment, let me know what you think. And if I said anything wrong or left something out, correction is welcome.
Another project I intend to make serious progress on this year is my scrapbook-cookbook.
I purchased an empty scrapbook at Hobby Lobby this Autumn along with paper and stickers to create the style I wanted.
I didn't care for the cover of the book, so the first thing I did was measure and cut out a more likable front and back, and slipped in beneath the plastic, over the original cover. I added the tags Happiness and Summertime, too. These were cut out from an old book of pre-made scrapbooking pages from Debbie Mumm...
I cut out tags, pages, and labels to write recipes on. Then little accents such as stamps, stickers, decals, and borders make it look artsy. ;)
I call it Homesteading and Housekeeping, and though it is primarily a cookbook, it also has basic guidelines to housekeeping techniques. I have three sections: Housekeeping, which is the cooking and baking part; Homesteading, which has tidbits on gardening, herbal information, animal-care, andhousehold tasks such as the laundry soap recipe, cleaning tips, etc; and lastly Heartwarming, which is more like the scrapbook part of the whole collection- pictures, quotes, memories, and words of wisdom to remember.
When I'm not working on this book, everything gets stashed in a bin that slides right under my bed. And when I am working on it... my whole floor is a mess. XD
