Lettuce Plant a Flower!

Danny and Hannah picking some tender large lettuce leaves from Carrie's raised bed.

The flower bed we filled with flowers Saturday. It was one of the happiest days we've had in months.

Every last one of us were outside in the cool of the morning, working on and around the front porch. While Sam and boys worked on bicycles, some of us were trying to decide how we wanted to arrange the flowers we'd bought.

I told Jonathan my idea about hanging flowerpots up in the corner to keep them protected from wind, rain, goats, chickens and beating hot sun. And this is what he came up with.

I just loved the tiered effect. Time and again, we've gone out and sat for a few brief moments in that wonderful Amish Hearts porch swing that I bought a couple years ago for our anniversary--and just tried to take time to breathe.

And we arranged the petunias and daisies by the door.

This is what it looked like behind the scenes! It was such a blessing to have Jonathan home to help.

I also had to pat myself on the back for allowing myself to spend money on a bunch of flowers. I felt like I needed them.

Fixing bikes to have a bike ride together later.

The girls have a cucumber plant growing indoors.

...because it just doesn't work well to plant outdoors. Somehow Friday, the children who picked lettuce for our sandwiches left the screen off Carrie's beautiful raised bed, and when we came home, this is what we found--everything stripped bare and all eaten up by the young chickens that had squeezed through the yard fence. Needless to say, Carrie was in tears.

And when we've been stripped bare of everything worthy and lovely, and all that is left is a stem and a root, 

we go and we plant flowers.

Because a person's character shows up when they've been beaten and scorned and crucified and shredded, and all that is left is a stick--and a root.

Christ was, said the prophet Isaiah, not at all beautiful or worthy to look at or esteem. He was like a "root out of dry ground." [How pretty is that?] 

Yet, He bore our sins and carried our sorrows, though He was ill esteemed and afflicted.

I read in one of the gospels Sunday, how Christ cast out a demon, and despite the wonderful thing He had done, the religious folk decided that He had done it through the power of the devil. 

So then Jesus had to defend Himself, and say, "How can Satan cast out Satan? A house divided against itself falls."

If Christ, the sinless, faultless Lamb of God, was so brutally criticized, falsely accused and treated like He was the devil, then how can we expect to fare any better? We can just expect that when we are trying to serve Him and do His will, there will always be those who are sure we are doing it out of a devilish motive. Convinced of that, they will start picking at our faults, of which there are many, for we are very undivine, and not all-knowing and all-wise as our Lord was, and our heads are not always caught up with our hearts.

But when our vegetable garden has been despoiled by the enemy, we choose to plant flowers--and have a wonderfully happy time doing it!

VBS at our Church

Lots of pictures of our VBS for Crystal and cousins over there in Africa,. Hopefully we'll finally hear from them by Tuesday, after nearly 3 weeks of only hearing a brief note third hand occasionally that the young people were fine.

So here are Carrie and Rose working on planning the crafts with our new pastor's wife, Sis. Kearney, who offered to do a VBS this year along with the tent meeting. A friend, Maria Hunt, was helping as well.

 The children carrying totes of supplies over to the church from the parsonage.

 The theme was about Bees, and they decorated all over the church with a bee theme.

 The five lessons covered "Bee Obedient," "Bee Kind," "Bee Cooperative," "Bee Honest," and "Bee Thankful."

 There was a poster board hive for each child, and they got to stick a bee on each day if they cooperated, brought a visitor, or learned their memory verse.

 The verse of the day.

 Sam and Jonathan helped pound in posts for the VBS sign in front of the church. A friend visiting from back east told Jonathan, "It's good to see signs of life at church!" We also put up signs for the tent meeting and VBS at the ends of the street.

 Cindy asked me to help with games, so I went online to search for VBS games and typed off game ideas and instructions for each day, but suggested that the girls be in charge, as they need to learn to lead in such things. I can help, but want them to learn skills that they can use in their futures.

I enjoyed tweaking different games to correspond with the bee theme. Timmy and I decorated clothespins with yellow and black pipe cleaners and google eyes to make bees, and the girls would clip these on bushes, trees and flowers around the church for the children to find. They played bee tag with the clothespins, "Drop the Bee [Handkerchief], and various fun bee-related relays. 

The most exciting was the "Bee Pop" relay. The children each had a yellow or black balloon, and had to race to the goal, a chair, and sit on the balloon to pop it. Here is Danny getting ready to pop his balloon.

 Carrie and Rose raced each other first to show everyone how to do it. They ran like the wind, burst the balloon with one incredible POW, and raced back almost at a dead heat. Then they each helped a tiny girl to race up and lifted them up on the balloon till they popped.

 Every time one would pop, the tent was filled with excited screams.

 Sometimes an older child helped a younger one, and sometimes the balloon would just bulge and not pop.

 So they were allowed to stomp on it then.

 Giving instructions for the water balloon toss.

 Hannah with the cute bee antenna bonnet each child wore each day, and with her hive at the end of VBS.

Walking and praying Monday night for the VBS, I felt to pray for 20 children, and that is the number that was there most of the days! I don't think we can take credit for answered prayers. It is God who inspires the prayers He wants to answer. But it is exciting to be part of His plan--to make ourselves vessels to pray through, work through, and love through.

 Danny with his prize and hive, and in the background, Sam, who was mowing the lawns, had found a garter snake.

 The snake was probably the subject of many dinner tables that night as children went home to tell how they got to hold a wiggly little garter snake by the tail!

 Sam and Timmy mow and operate the weed eater around the church while we waited. I walked around admiring the pretty flowers planted in the flower bed, around the bell, and over at the parsonage.

 On the way home, we stopped at Walmart and a greenhouse and bought some flowers to plant in front of our house even though it is late in the year. Then because the date was 7/11, the 7/11 stores all around were offering free small slushies, and so Sam remembered where a new 7/11 was near Falcon, and we went and got free slushies. I got a lemon, and the others got cherry or blue raspberry or watermelon. That was a tiring but fun day and week.

July 4th decor

We took some pictures just for Crystal to see while she is on the other side of the world. So if you are following our blog, too, don't mind a few extra personal things in here! 

The girls spent one day before July 4th decorating our home a bit... (Anything but having to work out in that horrible garage with Mom and Sam! Ha!)

 

 They made that wreath for the door, and below, they decorated the piano with what came to hand.

 Carrie found a site that showed how to make paper origami roses! She folded these roses out of red, white, and blue construction paper. I loved them!

 Corner of kitchen desk. Usually a catch-all, it was great to have the girls clean it off and beautify this little corner.

 And they hung a flag out front.

 Jonathan brought me home a July 4th bouquet of a red, white, and blue rose. And we had a red, white and blue breakfast on July 4th. It was the girls' idea. We had blueberries, red juice, and buckwheat pancakes with slices of banana and syrup. Are you getting hungry, Crystal, after all the cornmeal mush?

 Oops, this is sideways. Sorry. Anyway, it is orange-flavor apple dumplings the girls made. Yum!

 Blueberries waiting to be frozen.

 Carrie's garden is thriving. We got some tender lettuce yesterday. You guys back east don't even try to tell me all the stuff you are getting from your luscious gardens. I know all about it. We play no comparison games whatever. Here it is all about getting a few salads and...

 a few radishes, and we think we've done great!

 Leftover old popcorn for the pigs. They didn't know what to do with it!

 Jonathan called on his way home to tell me to look at the sunset. Then he and I sat on the front porch swing and watched one cloud swallow up another. And sometimes one cloud in our lives just swallows another, but if we have faith--there's a silver lining (or is it a golden glow?) to every cloud.

 The boys come home from VBS and play in the sandbox.

 All laid out in rows--like plans we have--neatly stretching before us, until God messes them all up and we are just a jumble, and learning to be flexible--

and learning to lean on Him.

You Have the Power to Choose

Very often we forget that we have the power to choose.

 "Even the sparrow has found a home, 

and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young--even Your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God." Psalm 84:3

Out of the same mud in which we could dig ourselves a hole to hide forever,

 the cheerful swallow makes herself a nest in the corner eaves of that little house on the prairie--from which there is no end of noisy singing from all the little birds hungry for breakfast.

 When you cannot see the trees for the grass...

 and when you relate more to these dried up sticks of last year's mullein,

 you can choose to mull with the mullein, 

or flit busily with the humming bees beside the sunny flowers.

 You can look for holes to crawl into (preferably beside cow pies)--

 or bloom where you are planted--even though it be by the same cow pie and gopher hole.

 You can focus on the thorns in that little patch of scrubby trees where you like to sit in God's presence,

 or you can lift your eyes to the fragrant blooms that attract the busy little insects which are in there somewhere.

 You can choose this perspective--this side of the tree with its dried up reeds...

 or that side, with a little spot of grass and a low spot--

where you can just sit low at His feet...

and just be. 

Where you can just say, "Lord, for lack of words, it's just me coming to You today."

 So you can be still and know that He is God, 

or you can also remember that even the leaves of the tree along the path back home are clapping their hands in praise to Him.

 And the gentle horses pause their daily cropping to watch the lone little lady walking home again--

remembering that even in this, too,

this situation where it looks like I have no choice,

or only a choice between two unbearable and impossible things

I have the power to choose. 

Sometimes I can choose to believe that there is a third alternative

that no one ever thought of before. 

And sometimes that third alternative is simply--GOD.