As last winter came to a close it was quite obvious that our little neck of the woods was in serious trouble in terms of water. No snow in the mountains is a pretty big deal and we were heading into what appeared to be a long dry summer.
As you might expect in this wonderful town of mine....folks talked about the weather. We speculated, we discussed, we consulted the Farmer's Almanac and looked to the old and wise for moral support. The cheering section was groaning right along with the rest of us.
There is nothing quite so discouraging as working hours and days and weeks and months to prepare and plant and weed a garden only to get a pittance in return because of a water shortage in July.
The consensus among many was that for the first time in my life....the wise would not be planting a garden.
What you might not have expected in this little town of ours is that we still pray together. And although not everyone chooses to participate, sometimes we fast together, too.
We decided to fast and pray for rain.
I'm sure I'm not the swiftest runner on the track, but I have learned something about the God that created me. For starters, He has a sense of humor. So while most were content to pray for rain I'm afraid I wasn't so quick to utter those words. I had no problem envisioning an entire year's allotment of water falling in a week and having to sheepishly admit that we asked for it.
I decided to try a different approach to this asking thing. I decided that I knew my Heavenly Father created me and I knew he would answer prayers and I knew He knew that all the empty bottles in my storage room kept me up at night and I knew that if He wanted me to have a garden we would have a garden. And I knew that He knew the exact amount of water and the exact time that water needed to be provided for our plants to flourish. So that's what I prayed for. I prayed that if it was His will, we would be blessed with rain when our garden needed it.
And then we planted seeds.
As it happens, I also found that I needed to have faith in my sweetheart as well. I let him make ALL of the decisions in the garden. ALL of them. I let him decide what to plant, where to plant it and even let him decide how wide to make the rows. I said absolutely nothing and impeded him not. (That might have been the biggest miracle this year).
We were blessed for putting those little pods of hope into the soil. Every time our water turn ran out and the earth began to bake I smiled at heaven and thanked Him in advance. What a simple concept and yet how abundantly we were blessed. I actually ran out of empty bottles!
I know this may seem like a pretty strange thing to write about as my top story for the year. For certain there have been mountainous events in my life this year that I should have been jotting down notes about instead.
But maybe not.
This year I have sent children off to college. I've held bodies that contained broken hearts. I've hugged porcupines and cuddled stink bugs. I've lived through a nightmare with a precious child and a brain injury. I've welcomed home one missionary and sent off another one. We've thrown a wedding, potty trained, learned to spell, learned to ride a bike, and lived through the High School musical. We've danced, cried, yelled, loved, and we've begged for forgiveness. My life this year has seen fun travels and exciting new friendships as well as longing for home and mourning with old friends.
And this year I became a Grandma.
So why write about some silly seeds?
On the night that my sweet granddaughter came into this world I was able to hold her in my arms for a few brief moments. I was asked to help clean her up a bit and for just seconds I was left alone with this precious gift straight from heaven. In the flash of that instance I realized how unsure and scary and dangerous this world is that she just became a part of. And in that same moment I was reassured that she knew what she was getting into and she was prepared for it. I felt her strength.
I simply whispered to her not to be afraid. I think it was really her whispering to me.
At some point in her life, my sweet grandbaby girl will probably start to doubt who she is and where she came from. At times she might feel like there is a drought of one kind or another in her world. I have hope that someone will remind her that she can always turn upward and ask for a summer shower.
I have faith that she will get exactly what she needs when she does.
As a side note to this story.....I did mettle just once in the planting. All I asked was why I couldn't see any zucchini coming up. Mr. Steve planted SEVEN hills of it to avenge my wrong. We're still eating zucchini bread!
