Month: June 2025

Just Keep Growing

Posted on by Wendy
If we are breathing, we are called to keep growing.

 

Last year, we planted some cherry tomato plants that produced more tomatoes than we could ever eat. We gave tons away and froze even more. After we pulled them up at the end of the season, they reseeded and came back until the frost finally killed them, or so I thought.

This spring, I had two of those same plants come back in between cracks in the rocks in the garden.

I plan to put cement in those cracks, but since I hadn’t yet, I decided to leave them and see what would happened. My brother cut one of them completely down with a weed eater because he thought it was a weed.

It came back.

I  took a close look at it today. It was thriving, covered in blooms and fruit and a little garden spider has made her home in it. I found myself as I often do when I’m in the garden, in awe of God’s work.

Sometimes even when I am determined to make something grow, it doesn’t. I do research. I work on the soil. I fertilize it and water it, but sometimes despite my best efforts, some of the things I plant, fail to thrive.

And then I have instances like the cherry tomato, that is determined to produce fruit whether in good or bad soil, even without any fertilizer to encourage growth or without water from me. Even when all seemed lost in the winter time, they were still working underground, unseen by me, to make a comeback.

It’s as if those seeds are committed to survive and thrive no matter what.

I feel like there is a lesson here. Sometimes we find ourselves in seasons when we feel we have nothing left to give. We may even believe that our time of producing any sort of fruit has passed.

That cherry tomato reminds me that God is always at work. The Bible reassures me that nothing is impossible for Him even though current circumstances may look impossible, He can see what I can’t.

My job is to keep reaching for Him, reaching for the light and to keep growing. He will do the rest. The good fruit always comes from Him.

A determined cherry tomato plant reminded me to just keep growing. Perhaps you needed reminding too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

 

Following Divine Directions

Posted on by Wendy
Sometimes we have to trust that Divine directions will always get us where we need to go.

 

I recently went to visit my daughter and her husband in a different state. I hadn’t been there since December, so I was using a GPS app. I was cruising along, singing with the radio at the top of my lungs without a care in the world when the directions it gave me went along with what I remembered. But, then it directed me to turn onto an unfamiliar side street that was off of the main road.

At first, I hesitated and then I decided to ignore it. This particular app is known for routing you around accidents and construction and even alerting you to road hazards ahead, which is why I chose it, but I didn’t think turning on that particular side street was a good idea. Instead of rerouting me as it often does, the kind voice insisted that I turn on the next side street. Again, I wasn’t sure where I was and it didn’t seem like a good idea to me, but this time, I complied.

It had me take one more turn and then, at last, I was on a main road. If I had listened the first time, it would only have taken me one turn instead of two.

I will never know why it routed me the way it did. Was there an accident? Was there a delay? Perhaps more importantly, why did I decide to use the app if I wasn’t going to trust it? I knew when I connected to it that it had more information on the route than I did.  Why did I feel the need to doubt and micromanage?

As I considered my GPS trust issues, I thought about my faith walk. I have been a Christian almost as long as I can remember. I love Jesus, but I have to admit that there have been times in my life when I have followed my own directions instead of His. Just like the voice in the app, He always gently reminds me about the direction I need to go. Honestly, I don’t always comply and sometimes I have been completely rerouted with a ton of extra turns.

In the end, He always gets me where He needs me to go because whether I want to admit it or not, He has more information than I do. A GPS app reminded me that I should always trust that Jesus has a good plan for me and He knows the direction I need to go even when I don’t. Perhaps you needed reminding too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

Gardenia Lessons

Posted on by Wendy
Seek and you will find.

 

I recently left a mason jar of gardenias on the kitchen counter. Mama was enchanted when she saw them and wanted to know where I had picked them. When I told her they came from the bush in front of the barn, she commented that she was surprised such perfectly formed flowers had come from that bush.

She planted it many years ago in an effort to spruce up the barn, but with the inability to get water to it, she eventually left it to fend for itself. It’s in a tough spot to bloom. There are briars and vines everywhere. Daddy cuts the briars out of it every now and then, but for the most part, it’s on its own.

One of my favorite things to do in the summer time has always been to pick flowers and bring some of God’s handiwork indoors to enjoy. This current season that I find myself walking through, has me being very intentional about seeking and focusing on the beauty around me, so when I saw that particular gardenia blooming, I went to investigate further.

Honestly, the fact that it was surrounded by overgrowth, fire ant beds and some questionable holes, made it all the more enticing. “Seek and you will find;” was a verse that kept running through my head.  My perseverance paid off. The bush was covered with blooms and buds and I snipped away enjoying the bonus of the intoxicatingly sweet smell of those pristine white blossoms.

When I returned from being out of town for a couple of days, Mama had put together her own arrangement  of fresh blooms in the kitchen as well as  a mason jar of them for me. I smiled.

My intentional search for beauty had encouraged her to do the same.

Later, as I sat admiring those flowers and God’s excellent craftmanship, (I mean, beauty and scent that comes from dirt!), I was reminded that our faith walk is also a call to intentionally seek His beauty, His will and His voice.  Just like those gardenias, when we seek Him, we will find Him and when we find Him, if we are brave enough to share, the people around us will naturally do the same.

An old gardenia bush reminded me that when we are willing to seek and share, we are often rewarded with more than we give. Perhaps you needed reminding too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂

 

A Call to Plant

Posted on by Wendy
What we plant can last long after we are gone.

 

In the spring of 2023, my hubby and I planted some sweet potato vines that I picked up at Lowes. I knew absolutely nothing about growing sweet potatoes. We picked one of our raised beds to plant them in and hoped for the best. The vines spread out, but our trusty guide, the internet, said that it wouldn’t be time to harvest them until the fall.

The tricky thing about potatoes is they grow underground, so you really don’t know what’s going on. We waited patiently to harvest them, but unfortunately, some deer beat us to it. When we went to check on them one day, the vines had been eaten, the dirt was dug up and there was nothing left but  six scrawny potatoes.

I wrapped them in some newspaper to cure them, put them in the barn and forgot about them. When I found them the following spring, they had little sprouts on them. I was going to toss them, but my hubby assured me that the sprouts were even better to plant than the vines. We picked a different bed;  he took out his pocket knife and cut off each little sprout and we planted them.

We had finally installed a fence to keep the deer out and the vines went wild. I had to cut them several times to keep them from taking over the garden. When all of the other vegetables were done for the season, those vines kept growing into the fall. I kept trimming them and waiting for them to turn yellow to harvest them.

Some time after my hubby passed that October, I was mindlessly wandering through the garden. When I got to the bed of sweet potatoes, I found the vines were still green, but upon closer inspection, I could see a potato just grazing the surface. I reached in and gently dug it out.

I was shocked to find a large, fully formed, sweet potato. I began to feel around the bed and to my surprise, found many more. I dug a few and then went to show my Daddy. He excitedly got a hoe and dug more.  In the end, we probably had 50 or so sweet potatoes that all came from those shriveled up few that the deer left behind.

Needless to say, they were the best sweet potatoes any of us could remember eating. We shared them with friends. We ate them for Thanksgiving. We ate them for Christmas and we still had more

I knew even then, there was a lesson in the amazing bounty that came from what seemed like useless trash that my hubby saw potential in planting. There was also a faith lesson in trusting that growth is going on even when you can’t see it.  But, the most significant lesson for me was that he was no longer here, yet what he planted was still feeding us and I knew in a larger sense, it always would.

It was a beautiful reminder that we are all in the seed planting business. While we often don’t get to see the fruit of many of the seeds we plant, we can rest assured that in God’s hands nothing is wasted and sometimes what we plant will even lead to a bounty that will feed many generations to come. After all, all things are possible with God.

Sometimes I need reminding. Perhaps you do too.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂