How Does Your Garden Grow?

  I've been tasked with providing a nurturing and loving environment that will foster the growth and development of two little seedling hearts. Someday they will be transplanted from the sheltering greenhouse their Daddy & I call home and they will find themselves providing strength, beauty, and shelter for others. For now, though, ours is the soil that feeds them; and I'm afraid my pH balance has been a bit off the past couple of weeks. I'm a little ... acidic.

  Of course it's understandable. Of course I get overwhelmed. I have postpartum hormones and I'm sleep deprived. I have two little people who are dependent on me and who aren't afraid to let me know what they want. I'm not beating myself up for being weary and for looking anxiously toward those mid-afternoon and late night hours when they both sleep. Any human would.

  BUT, I don't want my life to bear the fruit of humanity: anxiety, worry, discontent, crankiness, anger, bitterness. Sure, they are all understandable, but they aren't how I want to be characterized and they certainly aren't the environment I want for my tender little sprouts. I want the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I want more than myself for my kids. I'm not growing them for myself, after all.

  So, this acidic soil needs to be sweetened. Ann Voskamp has reminded so many of us of the health that comes with recognizing and acknowledging the gifts that infiltrate our everyday lives. At this stage in life, I see more reason for a mega-dose of gratefulness than I ever have before. I need the perspective that it brings to help lift my mind above the crying and whining and disciplining and self-imposed guilt that filter into our home in varying amounts on a daily basis.  If His mercies are, indeed, new every morning, I want to do a better job of paying attention so I don't miss them.

  That being said, here are a few of today's mercies:

• Cora sleeping in the car on the way to the church & library instead of screaming the entire time, as she normally does.
• Cora sleeping in my arms at the library instead of fussing, so Liam was able play with puzzles and puppets. A much needed outing in this, the hottest of summers.
• Liam's little voice singing along with his Seeds Family Worship cd
• Mom & sis coming over to provide some company and to put Cora down for a nap so Liam and I could read his new library books before his nap.
• NWA dealpiggy offering a great discount on air-conditioning repair services today, when our air-conditioning stopped working, AND the repairman can come today.
• Our air-conditioning failing on a day when it is in the low 90s outside instead of in the 100s, as it has been for the past few weeks.
• Cooking dinner for the very first time since June, thanks to our families and lots of sweet friends who brought us meals for the past month.
• "Cooking" a dinner that takes, literally, 5-7 minutes to throw into the crockpot. Done.
• The timing of the olympics. Television I'm really interested in watching during weeks when I'm doing lots of sitting, feeding little sister, and it's too hot to take little ones anywhere.
• Precious friends who pour out godly encouragement when I let them know I'm having trouble seeing life clearly.

"Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,

Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!"

-Great is Thy Faitfulness, Thomas Chisholm