And, honestly, I haven't had time to write anything longer - or even think anything longer than a FaceBook post. My mom used to say that sometimes life gets a little too real. Whew! She was right! The good news about what's been happening in the past few years is that I've learned to sit down and just sit. The TV in the den went on the blink and instead of replacing it, I use the room to sit. In a nice chair by the window, I rest, doze, pet whichever cat has joined me, rub my dog Huckabee's back with my feet, and read. This is where I keep my study Bible and try to review the scriptures from Sunday or Wednesday night. Usually, I get lost in the surrounding chapters, but that's okay. I still learn something. Like that Jacob spent a lot of his life running away from people because he thought they were going to kill him. (Of course, they did want to kill him.) He lived in fear for a long time, but when he finally came home he was welcomed by his brother. He was able to let go of his fear.
It's occurred to me that fear is common, though not usually of being mortally wounded. I have certainly spent too much of my life being fearful. One thing I was fearful of was lack of food - lack of a surety that the people in my house would have enough to eat. And I'll admit right here, right now, that we have had a ridiculous number of times when we really did not have enough in our pantry for a balanced diet. We did not starve. Sometimes I surely thought we would, though!
My need for food security led to starting a real garden. After a couple of years of small raised beds, my husband agreed to let me have a third of the back yard. I dug the rows in the 1800 square foot space by hand that first year, planting a hundred tomatoes in the dark after work. We've planted corn, Southern peas, green beans, butterbeans, greens, peppers, leeks, melons, cukes, carrots, kohlrabi, and I don't know what all! I have literally fallen asleep snapping beans and gone to work bleary-eyed from canning until the wee hours. We have been so very blessed with food security. I figured up one year that our garden produces $2,000 - $3,000 in food each year. I have even sold some of the produce on occasion.
The importance of our garden has been driven home in the last couple of years. We had a beautiful and especially bountiful garden in 2012. Then I was rear-ended the day before Thanksgiving, which made gardening and putting up food almost impossible to do. I just could not do the work I was used to doing, because of the pain. I put out a few pepper plants and we had volunteer vegetable plants that fed us well. There were enough jars of food put up to get us through last year and we still have plenty of pickles and jams. That's the wonderful thing about home-canning. The preserved food is good for a long time. I usually try to keep it no more than 2 years, but it is still good even much longer.
My husband has also had some health issues. We have been able to plant a little this year, mostly eating it fresh. So we will be buying more at the grocery store this winter. Maybe next season we can have more plants in the ground and maybe I can get a deep freezer to help me space out my canning work. But I don't feel that same insecurity and fear of lack that I did a few years ago. The sitting down made me be still and made me really put all my trust in the Good Lord, in Yahweh. I've always felt peace in the garden. Now I feel the peace of being in His Garden no matter where I am.
