~the practice of faith~

Good morning to you my  dear friends and family on this very early Easter morning.  The weather forecast for today looks pretty much "ok" with me as we are going to see a high in the 70's with partly cloudy skies.  Yesterday's 30 percent chance of rain only came to fruition about 30 percent of the time it was supposed to, yet the moisture that did come down was most welcome and surely needed. 

In between the rain drops, at times all 14 of them, I tried to help Mike with putting up the walls of a new storage shed that he is building adjacent to our house.  Seems like we'd just get going good and then it would begin to sprinkle.  But at day's end, we had finally gotten all four walls up without anyone's feelings getting hurt.  I'm surely glad that Mike knows what he is doing because I was only along for "the ride".  When it is all finished, we will finally have a better place to store our things and free up some room inside of our 100-year old farmhouse.  We took a couple of photos of our progress at day's end. 

I quickly learned several things to NOT do and that's all I have to say about that :) 

Mike and his good friend Mel had already made the base and a wall last weekend before the weird weather of this Sunday past blew in.  Yesterday he was just very thankful to have the four walls up and in place.  It's still the very early morning darkness as I write this here along the Western Slopes but I turned on the outside light when I woke up to check to see if it was still there.  It was.

This weekend has been a very good moment in time to practice my faith about a lot of things in life these days.  I have a lot on my "plate" to think about in the weeks coming ahead of me but I am no different than any of you, my friends.  We all have things that demand our attention and the worries that  I have on my mind pale in comparison to the things that other folks are struggling with.  For all of the things that I do NOT have to do, I give thanks this day. I am healthy and well.   Nowhere on my day planner does it say, "Oncologist appointment, Wednesday at 3 p.m.", yet I have a friend back home in Kansas that does.  Because we have no place for a washer/dryer here, I generally can find myself grumbling about having to take our clothes to town to wash.  But yesterday as I was sitting there waiting for them to finish, I saw a gentleman drive up in a truck that might well have been on its proverbial "last legs" bring perhaps every piece of clothing he owned inside to wash.  All in one tattered black garbage bag.  When I arise in the morning and head off to school, there will be a wonderful group of boys and girls waiting for the woman that they call "teacher" to be there for them.  Although I don't know what I will be doing next year, I do know what I was doing THIS one.  In all things, in the very least of things, I do so give thanks to God above.

When I wasn't helping Mike yesterday afternoon, I spent some time getting a few seeds more into the ground and as we talk about having faith, I did.  Mike found an old coffee can filled with the leftover seeds that we had ordered already last March, two months before we got married back in Kansas.  I had forgotten all about them, not even realizing that we hadn't planted them all.  That early spring day last year was my first experience in sowing any kind of seed into the clay like soil we have around our house here near Montrose.  I will never forget that day and the thought I had that like "magic, magic" when I came back in the early summer, I'd have a forest of sunflowers growing along the fence row next to the alfalfa fields.  I did not.

        Seven gazillion sunflower seeds planted that day in late March of 2013.....

                                                             Seven made it.

I remember being  disappointed to find out that so many of the seeds had died before even breaking through the topsoil.  I wanted to just yank out the ones that had made it and say that it had been a horrible idea in the first place.  But something stopped me from doing that and the "something" was the whack upside the head from God that I have often received in my life.  It was that gentle but noticeable nudging that told me at LEAST I could enjoy the few that had.  I did. 

So yesterday when Mike handed me the packages of seeds, I never even gave it a thought that it would be a bad idea to try and plant them again.  Out I went to the very same spot that had so dismally produced nigh onto nothing last year, carved out a place for them in the Colorado soil, and put them inside.  I remembered what my mom had always done with seed that was more than a year old and it was as if she was right there alongside me, encouraging me with her words.

"Sew the seed pretty thick, Peggy Ann.  Plant one for you, one for the birds of the field, and one for those that won't be able to make it.  You can thin them out later as they begin to sprout and grow.  I'm glad you are trying it once again.  This year will be better, just wait and see."

The moisture that came down in the course of the afternoon hours wasn't a lot but was sufficient enough to at least wet down the soil and hold the seeds in place.  Will they grow?  Not sure but whether they do or not doesn't really matter.  If they don't grow then at least I know THAT I HAVE.  It takes a lot of faith to set your sights on seeing 8-foot tall sunflowers come forth from seeds that didn't make it only one gardening season ago.  Yesterday was a lesson in believing that something good might indeed come forth from my efforts.  Time will tell.

The zinnia seeds made it up through the soil and now it is a "so far and so good" kind of wait.  I nearly missed noticing them sprouting and had it not been for the need to give them a little drink, their small sprouts would have gone unnoticed by me.  With a happy smile on my face, I yelled over at Mike while he was working on building the last wall of the shed.

"Oh my gosh I cannot believe it!  The zinnia seeds are coming up.  They actually made it!"

In just a couple of weeks more, I will be making the trip back home to Kansas, one of several during the month of May.  The very last of things that I need to do await me there and although I know everything will be ok, I will be glad to finally have everything finished with my house back in Reno County.  While I am there it will mean so much to me to connect with my family members that all live back in the south central part of the state and to see at least a few of the very good friends that I left behind when I moved here to Colorado.  My mind is full of thoughts of things yet to accomplish but my heart is even fuller of the love of people who care about me and want me to be "ok" in this life.  Even in all of the worries that this life can bring us, one thing is for certain.  In the end, it all turns out exactly the way it was supposed to.  I will be fine and dear friends, so shall you.  I love you guys, all of you, and from a place very far away I want you to know that I am thinking of you always.

Happy Easter everyone, for He is risen!

 

 I was not a very skilled "shed building construction assistant" yesterday but I did my best.  Even when the process didn't go quite as smoothly as he had anticipated, Mike was very kind to me and always remembered to say the words "please" and "thank you" when he would yell for me to come over and help him.  A month from tomorrow will mark one year of life together here along the Western Slopes of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.