Back to the Basics of Blogging For Me

In the past week or so, I've been thinking how much I miss blogging- about my family.  I occasionally blog over at My Life in Crumbs, and I kind of prefer that blog name to this one, but this is where it all started for me.  Writing about family life and sometimes an issue or two.  As social media became more prevalent, and an easier way to share photos and the Mathews news, I got away from blogging here.

But I miss it. I miss the goodness of just sharing photos and tidbits from our daily life.  Nothing too controversial.  The joys and tears of raising children, married life, homeschooling.  Simplicity.

There are big issues out there. The past year has been a doozy in many ways, with the election, racial tensions, global tensions. It all matters greatly. But yet, I find I can get so caught up in those things and wondering what on earth little ole me can do about any of it. And the Lord brings me back to my family.  They are what I can do about it. I have been given the gift of four lives to raise, potentially as world changers.  Maybe not global world changers, but hopefully in whatever sphere they are given, they will do great things (for God, I hope.)  My job right now is to be faithful and be a part of preparing them.

I planted two little gardens this summer. You should know I am a terrible gardener. While I long to have a beautiful flower bed, everything I have ever planted has died, save some ground cover.  But this summer I decided I would commit.  I invested my time, my back, and my husband's hard earned money.  I dug up the flower bed several times over, loosening the soil, digging out rocks and bricks.  I added compost and plant food. I researched flowers in the gardening book I bought ages ago.  I visited the nurseries and made lists of what they had.  I planned where the flowers would go and I bought them.  I planted them, laid newspaper around them to keep weeds at bay, and mulched them for protection and beauty.  I prayed the whole time, "Lord, let these flowers live!" I have gone out almost daily to weed (because weeds are pesky and will always find a way through). I have watered.  I have been delighted by the bees the flowers have attracted and I hope for monarchs, too.  The ground cover has spread and the flowers have survived so far.  I pray often that they make it through the winter.

The day I planted my flower bed.

My flower bed today- there is growth!

I also found a few seed packets we had purchased last spring in the shed.  I decided to hoe up a few rows in the other flower bed and plant some peas and beans.  I again loosened the soil, but then I just made a few haphazard rows and planted the seeds.  I rarely watered them.  I barely pulled a weed. And today I picked my first batch of green beans.

I'm a novice gardener at best, but it reminds me of raising children.  Sometimes we do everything right, and we get the expected result, but sometimes we don't.  I know I will have flowers that don't survive, and some that will.  And those bean and pea seeds I just barely poked in the ground and left alone remind me of God's grace.  Sometimes we don't do all the right things, and fruit grows anyway.  The beans took about eight weeks to produce, the peas haven't shown a pod yet.  Sometimes growth takes longer, seed to seed, variety to variety.  And so it is with kids.

I am not always faithful to do the "right" things as a mom.  And I am confronted daily with my inability to do everything as a mom, period. I'm so grateful that the Lord doesn't expect perfection from me. I'm so glad he fills in the gaps I miss, that he covers my mistakes, that he causes supernatural growth in me and my children.  And I'm so grateful he continues to grow me as a mother who cares, who sacrifices, who invests her life for her children.  I'm so grateful when he whispers "well done" on the good and hard days.  More and more, I realize that this mom job is totally dependent on his grace.

I don't want the simplicity of that, or the enormity of that, to ever escape me.  So I want to write about it more.  To remind myself. To look back in years to come and be reminded of the ever-present song that plays in the background of our lives, its words whispering, "He is faithful."