For as the soil makes the sprout
Come up and a garden causes fruits
To grow, so the Sovereign Lord
Will make righteousness and praise
Spring up before the nations.
Isaiah 61:11
Our garden flourishes with succulent tomatoes, a plethora of cucumbers and blue-red hollyhocks aiming skyward. I cannot keep up with the herb drying and am glad my hubby is moving the sprinkler to needed dry spots. Kentucky in the summer pushes produce out as fast as a multip does her eleventh child.
Wish my creative juices were as prolific. I’m dancing around a new tale of mayhem. But the world, spinning in a crazy, off kilter pattern, is begging for prayer and the garden needs tending. Which garden will I choose to focus on? His or mine? The balancing act takes a deft acrobat. Even juggling my life is beyond me. I need a tutor who has walked before me and can show me the way of peace.
Often, my mornings begin with, “Blessed are you, O Lord our God, King of the universe” and waiting to get my assignments for the day. At times the still, small voice I long for is silent. I carry on to what I thought was the uncluttered path. Attempting to rejoice in each day’s unique pattern and the curve balls pitched my way, I try praising God throughout the convoluted hours and strike out on occasion.
Those who work their land
Will have abundant food, but
Those who chase fantasies will
Have their fill of poverty.
Proverbs 28:19
Things begging for attention swallow the few hours I have to create. Summer exacerbates that problem. I long to walk in the early morning when the humidity is still waking up. However, getting my tennies on when cucumbers beg to be pickled and the weeds are throwing a backyard party makes guilt my companion. Like the tires on our decades-old car, I must realign or the road I’m on becomes a bumpy, off-camber trial.
With the gift of helping hands, I’m still taking a step back and regrouping. People are God’s priority, so as His servant, they must be mine. Going through a manuscript to see if I’ve followed the Oxford comma rule or had too many ly endings to words needs to be further down my list of to do’s.
The blessing I have received this summer is the willing hands of visiting grandchildren and a hubby who is a master cook. (I won’t use the word chef because it would make him look for a certificate.)
May you, too, be blessed by relationships growing in the garden of your life.
Have bags will travel should be Jeanette-Marie Mirich’s life’s theme. She moved twenty-two times before settling in her first home. An Oregonian by birth and who graduated with a B.S. degree in education from Portland State University, Jeanette has swum in the Ligurian Sea, collected shells and sea glass along the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Atlantic, Caribbean Oceans, Straits of Malacca, Gulf of Mexico and the Andaman Sea. Her peripatetic lifestyle is courtesy of the U.S. Air Force and her husband’s medical training.
Passionate about needs in the third world after living in Thailand during her husband’s deployment, she has accompanied her husband on dozens of medical mission trips. Mother of three, Grammy to thirteen exceptional grandchildren, she travels from her Kentucky home to an Oregon cabin, scribbling poems and short stories as well as writing novels.
I shouldn’t have made the promise when Harry was dying but…
You know how it is. You want to please when the person you’ve always loved is hooked up to plastic tubing looking peaky.
Delilah Morgan, a woman of honor, is unable to ignore her promise to her husband, Harry, which leads to trouble, with a capital T. The beautiful, unassuming Delilah plans to mourn in private after Harry passed, but he had other ideas—specifically, leaving his wife in good hands and protected from the elite of their small Kentucky town. However, he neglects to include his wife in his plans.
Harry has selected local judge, Lyle Henderson, the heart-throb of most of the women in town, to court his widow. The judge acquiesces to Harry’s wishes until Henderson’s life spins into a maelstrom after the discovery of bodies in his long absent wife’s car. The police and FBI begin to suspect him of murdering his wife and her apparent lover.
Determined to clear the judge of murder, Delilah resolves to hunt down the true story. Their adventure nearly costs them their lives and leads them on what Delilah suspects is a wild-goose chase toward love. In reality, their wanderings reveal what sacrificial love can encompass.
