Here are 25 things I am thankful for today…
10 Mourning Doves,
2 Oregon Juncos, 4 Black-capped Chickadees,
8 American Goldfinches,
in the backyard at one time – and 1 Scrub Jay (that scared them all away!).
From my heart,
Sherri
The season we call Autumn has got to be one of the most beautiful of all four seasons. Foliage dies to the coming of winter, only to produce an array of colors that can leave you speechless. There is irreproducible beauty in the fall of an autumn leaf. Leaves colored in hues of golds and reds, oranges and browns, silently letting go of the branch they spent the summer holding onto and slowly floating to the earth.
I took a walk today to capture some fall color and any bird that beckoned to me photograph it. In my walking, I noticed splashing in the creek below me. I thought it was a duck, but as I kept looking, I could not see anything. I waited.
It happened again and I realized it was a fish. A very large fish. I could see his tail and fins sticking out above the water as he wriggled his way back up river. The closer I looked, I wondered… Could it be? And just then a young man rode by me on his bike and asked if I was taking pictures of salmon.
Um, yes. That’s what I’m doing. I didn’t even know there was salmon in that creek.
I looked closer. As the fish wiggled and wriggled more, I saw his snout with the upturned mouth. Yes, there are salmon in that creek.
I stood almost an hour watching two fish swim upstream and then let the flow of the creek take them back downstream, only to repeat the process over and again. It was amazing – their commitment to get to wherever they were headed so they could lay their eggs.
Sometimes I have places in my life I’d rather be than where I am. I want to always be in the place where I am totally devoted to the Lord. I want to be in the place where He is my beginning and end, the first and the last. However, it can be and has been and at times I know will continue to be – a struggle. I fight my way upstream, sometimes making headway, only (it seems) to be carried back in a mere, unexpected instant by the currents of this life. Carried back downstream to where my shoes sit waiting for my feet. I find it happens because I either rushed ahead of God’s timing, I wanted things my way, I thought God’s way was my way, or I plainly just lost my way.
I can be determined in all of these situations. I can persevere. I can remain committed, only to realize I got it wrong. Somewhere along the way I lost the mark swimming upstream and fought a good fight, but I swam up the wrong creek. Somewhere along the way I made the decision to take the left fork of the creek, only to find it led to stagnant water. How I longed for the true path that led to the fresh water, the running water.
Easier is not necessarily best. Upstream – in the struggle – that is where the true lessons are most likely to be found. Wisdom is found in the experience of the struggle. Determination, perseverance, commitment – they will keep you moving no matter how difficult the struggle. Focusing on the mark God has set before you and ignoring the deceiving forks in the creek will keep you on the true path where the fresh water – the Living Water – can be found.
From my heart,
Sherri
We were walking up the pathway, Boo and I. Almost to the stairs. Boo suddenly needs to go back. I didn’t know why. Then she enlightened me.
There are weeds I need to pull. I walk over the clover and miss the miracle. Boo is adament about taking a few steps back. Huddled in-between the multiple leaves of rusty-red clover is a delicate, bright yellow flower, smaller than Boo’s little pinky finger. It has five petals. As Boo bends to pick it, she is having a hard time pulling it apart from the plant and as she does, she pulls a petal off. Saddened and not seeing any other little blooms, she continues up the pathway and into the house.
What I saw was a picture of God’s love. Sometimes all we can see in ourselves amounts to a basket filled with weeds. We feel we aren’t appealing, captivating, beautiful to anyone. Then, every once a while, someone sees something special. They see past the weeds. They see value. They see potential. They see the heart. Amidst the weeds. The garbage. The sin.
All I saw was a bunch of weeds that need to be pulled. All Boo saw was the tiny flower tucked in the center. All God sees is what’s in the heart.
“…the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
May you find a miracle today.
From my heart,
Sherri
I have a friend that gave to me a new state quarter every time they were released. She also made me the recipient of a brand new shiny gold Washington dollar the year those were released by the U.S. Mint. It is a beautiful coin. Exquisite, really, if you collect coins. It’s quite similar to the Susan B. Anthony dollar.
The day I received those two coins – the newest state quarter and the Washington dollar, we were sitting in North Idaho, eating lunch. It was a beautiful day, full of sunshine and not a cloud in the sky as we sat by the lake right across from her work.
There were three of us there that day and she gave coins to the two of us who had met her for lunch. I looked at the coins in my hand. I was more drawn to the gold than the silver and noticed George on the face of the coin.
“Did you notice he isn’t smiling on the dollar coin?” I asked my two friends.
No, they hadn’t noticed.
They took another bite of lunch while I kept looking at George. Then I looked at George on the quarter. “He’s smiling on the quarter,” I said, bringing my ongoing investigation up to date. “It’s somewhat more of a mischievous smile, but it’s there.”
They hadn’t noticed that, either. I looked back at the gold coin.
“Did you notice they got rid of “In God We Trust” on the face of the coin?”, I asked.
One replied yes. The other, no.
“Get this,” said the friend who gave me the coin, “they’ve put it on the side.”
“That’s stupid,” I commented. “It’ll get rubbed off.”
I thought, ‘Just like we are rubbing God right out of our country.’
We take a little bit of Him out of this and we take a little bit of Him out of that and before we know it, He’ll be completely gone and when we are at the end of our ropes, we’ll cry out to Him – but why should He answer? We didn’t need Him then. We made that more than clear. Why then, should He want us now?
Some days we wake up and feel empty and alone and wonder why. The answer may be simple, really…
One day we chose to rub out our prayers before meals. Embarrassing when we go out to eat. Can’t have that. What will people think? And the next week we rubbed our quiet time out of our mornings. Gotta make this meeting, gotta make that luncheon, gotta do this, gotta do that. And it’s becoming quite easy to justify rubbing church off the calendar because of the songs they’re singing or the pastor’s preaching much too long, or no one says hi or… . Before we know it – we’ll have rubbed God completley out of our lives.
“In God We Trust.”
It’ll get rubbed right off of the sides of those dollars. Just wait and see.
A little here, a little there. To want Him off the coin, He had to have been void in our lives. Before we know it, we’ll have rubbed Him out of everything.
From my heart,
I give thanks, look up into the sky and can’t help but wonder – why would a God so mighty, so pure, so holy – love me?
Me – full of small doubts and large fears, endless mistakes. Yet – You love me still.
I give thanks for love when I’m full of doubts and I’m full of fears and I’ve made endless mistakes and it’s difficult seeing past my limited focus. I give thanks when the storms rage. Growing in grace comes in every season. Winter must come before spring. My life needs the rain as well as the sunshine.
Through heartache and tears, the soil becomes fertile for growth. During the growth process, I find refuge in His care.
Safety in His arms.
Peace resting in Him.
There, under His care and protection, I wait for dark, hovering clouds that boldly threaten storms, flooding, devastation – there I wait with Him.
It is in the sitting at His feet, in the waiting and trusting that my tears are wiped by the palm of His hands. It is in the trust that causes me to be still. It is in the still, quiet wait that teaches me calm.
He says Go, it is safe and I will be with you. And so I go.
Hesitantly, I take a step and as I do, spring awaits. Earth the once stood bare, without life, now stands in royal grandeur, it barrenness turned to beauty.
Where dark once reigned, warmth now resides. Tiny hopes for life, once called buds, are now beautiful blooms with a sweet fragrance that drifts through the garden. Blossoms of bright hues are scattered by Your hand.
Every bird beckons me with its song of magnificence. Each buzzing bee joins in at His orchestrated command.
Tree branches lift their foliage in praise. New life sprouts for all to see. New life fills every nest and together, creation shouts praise to its Creator.
Once I have walked the road of a new spring, it is only a matter of time before the cycle is evident to all and a new season is upon me. Vibrant, healthy life, with the rains of the spring and the warmth of summer, will begin to die again. The cycle now resumes.
Seasons must change, winds must blow, storms must rage. It begins when leaves fall, giving way to the coming winter. Yet it is in their silent death, a beauty I see. Their vibrant colors sing out praise to their Creator. It is in the crunching and smashing, the scrunching and mashing of fallen leaves that once brought shelter from the scorching sun that now bring delight to Your children.
As they are pushed away from their branches above, they clear space for the new life that will follow in step. History will repeat itself once again with the cycle of life. Change comes, though no human eye can see. It is before the silent, unseen miracle I worship You.
You have taken this life, like branches once bare, and breathed the breath of new life into the old and barren. Embraced with grace, chains fell away like dead, dry leaves on a blustery day. Storms of darkness blew with the pelting rains of winter and You held me close. I feared no evil. No storm took me captive. I did not drown.
Again You took me to Spring and have gave to me fragrance as perfume. The stinging, pelting rains of winter did not keep me from You, but drew me close, caused me to wait, to trust, to grow, to bloom.
I have learned from You in hard times. I have found shelter in Your care. I can walk in the darkness, for I have found your comfort and safety in that place.
My God, I give thanks to You now, when thanksgiving comes with ease. When the skies are clear and the sun bathes me in its warmth, I praise You. I give You thanks then, in the season where life gives way to change, and light turns to darkness, having learned that in the cold, in the pain of life, You have held me close. Close is where I want to stay.
This season of celebrated Thanksgiving, I thank You as others do – for joy, being a part of the living, obvious blessings of this holiday. Food, fellowship, memories and more.
Most – I thank You for taking me – soiled, shattered, broken and bruised – me, who only someone You could make new. Once lifeless, in pain, lost, and alone – I praise You, my almighty, all-powerful, omnipotent God, and give you heartfelt thanks. For all you’ve done, for the gift of hope, for restoration, for making me whole again. It is my whole heart that You alone have won.
The flowers of spring that bloom with beauty. The autumn winds, the falling of leaves. The cold chill and storms of winter. The wonder and new life of spring. There is a purpose for everything, for everything a divine and greater reason.
I give thanks now. I will give thanks again. For You have remained so faithful to me. Over and over. Again and again.
From my heart,
Several years ago there was a popular craze among Christians… the 40 Days of Purpose craze. This popular craze ran its course, like so many other Christian crazes tend to do until another idea is targeted to promote Christ-likeness.
The one thing that impacted me more than anything was really allowing to sink down deep the truth that my greatest purpose in life is to worship God. I have to admit that since I have let that truth sink deep, I have struggled with what that actually looks like 24/7.
Until one day.
Having Parkinson’s at the age of 46 can sometimes leave me feeling extremely purposeless at times. Feeling as if I don’t have much to contribute any more. When I am in a good frame of mind, I know that there is much I can contribute to life, but my mind isn’t always in such good a frame and I struggle with how one worships when they feel lost, discouraged, frustrated, displaced and even… alone.
Last week I was physically struggling with the regular, mundane chores of life. You know, the doing-dishes-folding clothes-sweeping chores and on and on the list meanders silently down the page, waiting patiently to be crossed off once again. This is the kind of physical struggle that no matter what you say silently or aloud to your ten fingers, they won’t obey. I say, “Type faster,” and, they don’t. Do they hear me? Yes. Do they obey? No. “Scratch my back,” I say and they can’t. “Tie my shoes,” I plead.
Nope.
Ain’t gonna happen.
Today we’re wearing slip-ons.
Sometimes I’m finding I have to ask family members to tie bows and knots in my shoes, zip zippers, button buttons, put on or take off a coat. Those are met during my off times. Times when my mind says go and my muscles say no.
Off times can have a tendency to make me feel lonely and discouraged, as if I actually have lost my purpose in life. Life as I once knew it, isn’t quite the same any more.
Somewhere in the change,
during the change,
because of the change,
I feel my purpose changed as well.
If it is true that I was made to worship God, my first realization – it’s a 24/7 activity. God doesn’t shut off now and then, but exists and is available at all times. At work, at school, at home, in the sunshine, in the storms, in the garden, at the dump. Worshipping God 24/7 and what that looks like for me became my quest. I wanted to know intimately this purpose for my life – that of worshiping a holy God. Every other purpose that once seemed real or important has, one by one, slowly faded to a lesser priority or disappeared altogether.
I began with the fact that
I am a mother.
Mothering duties seem to lessen as I scan an empty nest, its gaping empty spaces filled occasionally – only temporarily. Feathered friends flitter about, with no playmates to be found. I am a mother of three whose primary purpose for 32 years seemed to be that of training up my children in the best way I knew how to point them – direct them – in the path they were bent towards. Now, I am left sitting on a sharp twig in a pokey nest where there are weightless feathers tucked amongst the twigs where my three little chicks once squawked for dinner. I have asked myself, “How do I worship at a time like this, as I sit here watching my children fly away, needing me no more?”
I am a wife.
I know as well as my husband does that I all too often fail in that primary, earthly role, easily distracted with lesser things in life, indirectly and unintentionally putting him second. The role of wife is an extremely important role – jammed full of purpose – and yet somehow, I all too often convince myself that I have fallen short. And so, as a wife, I find myself asking, “How do I worship when I feel I fail so often at who I perceive I am to be as a his wife?”
I am a daughter.
Instead of me being able to run to and fro – doing things for my parents, doing things for his parents – time and distance play much too large a factor in journeying away from home so easily. I learn that our parents are trying to figure out how they might be able to help take care of me in the years to come because of my physical changes. Instead of me thinking about the opportunities to care of them, they think of ways to care for me. This daughter asks, “How do you worship when you feel like you may not be able to do that which you actually looked forward to – giving back a little of what was given to you?”
I am a friend.
In the roles of friendship, I find myself forgetting the things I long to remember. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Prayer requests. Names. My head is filled with too much and remembers too little. I ask, “How do I worship when friends feel I don’t care because I forgot to return a phone call or send an overdue letter or reply in some fashion or form? When they think something’s wrong because the muscles in my face have ceased to obey my brain when it says to smile and a frown is what they witness plastered there instead?”
Fairly good questions. In the asking, however, I notice there is much feeling occurring. In that realization, God shows me the need to live by truth and not feelings that so easily deceive.
Truth One.
I am good a mother. Never perfect, but fairly decent.
My little chickadees may be flying away but every once in a while they turn around and say, “Remember when you taught my how to do this?” then they take a fancy dive, pulling up out of a crash landing just in time and…
it’s beautiful.
Every once in a while, they fly back and sit a while with me in a familiar nest and I like that. It makes the next departure a bit easier. It makes the gap that is left not so gaping.
Then there’s
Truth One, Part Two.
I will never sit on that branch alone. I will never be in that nest alone.
It might seem high from ground view. My wings may be tired and the wind may blow. I may, at times, feel I am being blown away, but there is One who covers me with his wing and it is there under His protection I will hide and find shelter.
Truth Two.
I am a good wife. I could do better. I could do as my husband says and not cook on high so often. I could leave the dishes and sit and talk to him a while. I could quit expecting so much of myself and realize that sometimes it’s okay to just be… me.
Truth Three.
I am a daughter and I am still alive. This disease has become a part of my life, but it will not claim it. I refuse to sit in a chair the rest of my life and eat bon bons ‘til I die.
(See’s Bordeaux’s maybe.)
It is still my desire that if God is willing, I will be there to take care of our parents and give back whatever I can for what they have given and done for me.
Truth Four.
I am the best friend I know how to be.
I am the best friend that I am able to be.
Most of the time.
I could do better.
When I remember I need to call back, I need to just do it right then or… I will forget once more, leaving friends to feel neglected. When I remember a friends’ birthday is near, I need to get that card out then or… well, you know. The truth is, I need to not put off until tomorrow what can be done today for the fact is, I’ll plain forget.
Truth Five.
The smile’s there (even if it can only be seen on the inside) because joy is there. My ability to still smile on the inside is due to my life purpose of being made to worship God.
There is a song by the group Watermark called ‘Knees to the Earth’. This was playing the other day as I approached a red light. As I was slowing to a stop, there ahead of me was a beautiful mountain, presently catching the first snow fall of the season. As the soft, delicate, frozen flakes fell, each finding their own place to land, the picture being created before me quickly became a most beautiful portrait. I captured it in the photo frames of my mind.
As I waited speechless at the light, the view was breathtaking and took my thoughts of purposelessness away as I listened to the words of that song playing in the background…
Beautiful Jesus, how may I bless Your heart?
Knees to the earth, I bow down to everything You are
Beautiful Jesus,You are my only worth
So I will embrace You always, as I walk this earth
Be blessed, be loved, be lifted high
Be treasured here, be glorified
I owe my life to You oh Lord
Here I am
What He’s done, Who He is – this is cause for heartfelt worship.
Holding tight. Not letting go. Through the joys, through the pain of this earthly life. When I feel alone, discouraged, displaced – it is He that I will hold on to and it is me that He will not let go.
Be blessed oh Lord, be loved, be lifted high
Be treasured here, be glorified
I owe my life to You oh Lord
Here I am
My knees fall to the earth
Without Him I am nothing. I am no one, wandering aimlessly without purpose. Not as a mother, nor a wife, nor a daughter, nor a friend. It is He I will bow before and find my worth. It is He who is deserving of my worship.
It is on my knees that I find purpose.
From my heart,
Sherri
It’s October. The season of harvesting. We harvest apples, corn, beans, tomatoes… pumpkins from the pumpkin patch.
I once heard someone compare being a Christian with that of being a pumpkin. They said that being a pumpkin is likened to being a Christian because we are, like a pumpkin, carefully lifted up from the pumpkin patch of life. We are snipped from the old life and what happens next, I believe, depends on us. We can crawl up, hide in an oven where no one will see us and we tend to lose our witness, shrivel up and then die. Or – we can be created into something brand new. Choose a new face, you might say. I’m not sure about you, but the second option sounds much more appealing to me than the first…
Mini Pumpkins 2011
My experience with pumpkin patches is that they can tend to be prickly, much like life itself. They can be appealing but if you get too close, it stings. You tend to walk away with scratches from areas you perhaps should not have gotten so close to. What a gift when the Master Gardener reaches down and saves us! It is then that the transformation begins. The cleaning, the gutting, the washing. I am sure some wish they had remained there on the ground. Some wiggle down and actually do roll back over there and stay until they eventually die.
But, if we allow God to do his miraculous work within us, He begins by opening us up. That is often a very vulnerable and frightening place for many of us to be, especially if we come from places where we tend to hide from the rest of the world. After we have been “exposed”, He reaches in and begins to get rid of the “junk” inside. He scrapes and he pulls. It can be quite painful at times, to say the least. The more we resist, the longer it takes, the more it hurts. But then there finally comes a time when we are made clean – made clean by the righteousness of Christ. One day we are sitting in the dirt, basking in the warm sun without a care in the world, and the next day we are being opened up and cleaned out. Cleansed from rubbish in our lives that so easily gets a hold and before we know it, it’s attached itself to our life in such a way so that it actually is very painful to remove.
Sin does that. It looks appealing and it always sounds fun. It takes root and creates quite a mess. But if we let God have His way and love us as only He can, He gives us a brand new look. He cleans us out and puts a light inside for all to see. A light that shines brightly in the darkness through a smile filled with joy.
I have pondered over the pumpkin patch. I have thought how wonderful it is to have been cleaned out by holy hands for a holy purpose by a holy God. It gives me shivers. Who would have thought we could have taken an ordinary pumpkin and seen the very hand of God upon it in such a way? How magnificent the comparison of an ordinary pumpkin with that of the life of a brand new Christian.
A brand new face, eyes that see like His, a mouth that smiles with joy, the light of his Spirit shining through us into a dark world … Doesn’t it make you just want to be a pumpkin, freshly picked from heaven’s own pumpkin patch?!
His,
Sherri
first published October 12, 2005
Last week I had the grand privilege of taking my 3 1/2 yr old granddaughter, Boo, to see her great grandparents, Gigi (Boo’s name for her great grandma) and Papa. What an experience in so many ways. I always love the trip itself – whether by jet, automobile, train… I’ve never gone there by train, I’ve been on a train ride once with my grandmother from Los Angeles to Seattle. It was an adventure and another story…
This trip was by ‘aircraft’, as Boo says now instead of ‘airplane’ because that’s what the pilots called it over the speakers in the planes. Anyhow, Boo’s mom and dad said she could go with me, my mom and dad graciously paid our way north, and we were there a little over a week.
I brought some dress-up items for her, as that is one of her favorite pastimes. She dressed up in her princess dress and tutu and fairy wings and went fishing down at the river. At one point in the trip, Papa teased her about her wings, saying to her that she was nuttier than a fruitcake. Matter-of-factly she replied to him, “I AM NOT A FRUITCAKE. FRUITCAKES CAN’T FLY. FAIRIES FLY AND I AM A FAIRY.”
The other day Boo was singing and when I asked what she was singing, she replied, “I am singing a song Jackson wrote.” Jackson is her favorite stuffed dog. Jackson is a she. Jackson uses the computer to write down her songs.
“What’s the name of her song?” I asked Boo.
“I Broke the Table.”
Hmmm… that Jackson is one smart puppy, writing such profound songs with just fluff for brains. Maybe there’s hope for me…
Today was Boppa’s birthday. I put Boo down for her nap and ended up falling asleep beside her. About ten minutes into my nap, she wakes me to tell me that she’s done with her nap and that she was going to go out to the other room but she’d come back in a few minutes to check on me. “Uh, no – you’re having your nap.”
Her agenda was much different. She insisted her nap was over and that I could “just fall back to sleep and I’ll (Boo) come back in a few minutes and check on you.”
Uh, no again. She finally settled down and slept a good 2 1/2 hrs.
I love when she wakes from her nap, as she’s so cuddly. We usually rock a bit and then she’s ready to face the afternoon head on with a mind full of ideas of what to accomplish until it’s time to go home. Today it was helping Grammy set the table for Boppa’s birthday dinner.
Boo takes birthday parties very seriously. She picked out a card for Boppa with a silly, strange looking cat on the front and every time she’d look at it, she broke out giggling.
I sometimes think God puts silly, nonsensical things like that in our days to make us laugh, but we are so intent on being busy that we miss it, thereby missing out on the laughter and the joy in it all. We take life much too seriously. Life was meant to live out loud. To enjoy to its fullest. Somehow, we miss that all too often. After all, how many times have you seen a fairy with a tutu fishing?
His,
Sherri
The leaves waltz to the ground, creating a song all their own as they skip along the ground to a tune accompanied by the whistling wind. It is breathtaking to me. We were made to enjoy this – to stand in awe of every hue, every detail – as the sun pierces through the yellows, the reds, the oranges, creating the illusion of gold shimmering from the limbs of the maple trees.
Fall has got to be, hands down, my favorite season. But then, I would probably say that about each one as they transition into the other. I love to listen to the sounds of fall – the wind blowing, the leaves as they dance along the ground, neighbors raking. On a quiet day, it is a beautiful sound against the quiet. The crisp air that turns your cheeks pink and makes you long for warm cups of tea or cocoa and a good book. Colorful kites that fly high against a sky that determines whether to bring days of winter or pass the storm on by for yet another day.
It is the season of preparing the ground for the cold and hardness of the coming months. It is the shutting down of growth as we have known it for the last two seasons. It is – a time of dying. I stand in my driveway and all around me there is evidence of life slipping away. Shrubs are thinning. Vegetables have quit producing. Flowers have faded and turned to seed. Trees are almost bare and the grass lies dormant against the coming frost. And yet, it is the most beautiful of all seasons to me, for it reminds me that real beauty comes when death occurs.
The Christian’s life is like that. I have met Christians who have died to self. They are like the picture of fall, having been touched by the sun of summer and watered by the rains of spring. They are absolutely beautiful. What makes them so beautiful is their lack of self. They have become less of themselves and more like Christ. A dying to self, reflecting the colors of their Lord.
I have seen Christians who sound like fall. That may sound absurd, but theirs are the sounds of worship and praise from a heart of gratitude for what God is doing in, through, and with their life. They dance the waltz of thanksgiving. Their leaves are turning from green to brilliant yellows, oranges and reds and they are breathtaking. They are learning to let God have His way and paint His picture on their lives with such radiant colors that they reflect their Maker. However, with all that we know of fall, we know all too well that winter follows right behind. It often comes sooner and more fervently than we anticipate, much less desire. Soon the hardships and the tests of a cold, dark season must be endured. Branches will be stripped of every last leaf that was clinging to its branch.
It is in the winter season where a Christian is strengthened by the weight of the struggles he must endure. In nature, the snow falls and it can either cause a limb to be strengthened, or the branch will snap under the pressure and – so it is with us. The winter months of our lives can allow us to be strengthened like those branches or we can say ‘enough’ and snap.
If we hold tight to the Lord through the dark times and make Him our refuge, we find that eventually, the storms pass through this season we call winter and spring brings new life. New hope, soft, spring rains, the air begins to warm and buds turn into blossoms. So often we forget that in those winter months, it may seem harsh, dark, and cold, but there is life inside. A life that cannot be touched by the cold and the darkness that surrounds us. A place where buds are being formed, where blooms will burst forth. A place where God is at work even though we may not be able to see evidence right away and new life will be evident once again.Fall. We need the fall and winter seasons of life in order to experience the springs. Seasons of transformation, dying to self. Seasons of dormancy where we wonder if the sun will ever shine again.
But, it will. And it does.
Spring has come and gone, the fun of summer is coming to an end, and the beauty of fall has arrived with evidence of life transitioning from one critical season of life into another. Instead of discouragement robbing our hope of the coming winter months, let’s remember that spring will come once again. The colors of fall are a beauty to behold. How I desire to be colorful just as the leaves on the maple trees that line the city streets – dying to self so that my colors shine for His glory.
What colors do you want to be?
September Tidbits…
September is almost over (can you believe it?), but before it comes to an end once more in time, here are some very important tidbits you may need to know for that once in a lifetime absurd question that only you will have the answer to because you read about it here…
This month, if you are going to be near the small, little, friendly /town of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, occupancy of little more than 29,000, stop buy and join the 100,000 people from all over the Midwest who make it a point to visit and enjoy their sweet corn. They serve over 70 tons to their visitors each year. Hungry for some sweet, fresh, hot, buttered corn?
Also – this month is National Clown Month. If you’re a clown – thanks for all the smiles and crazy. If you’re not, why not consider bringing some joy into someone’s life? Clowning around is more than just goofing around and getting in trouble. It can be a serious hobby or career. If you’ve ever thought about seriously clowning around, you can contact Fondra Magee through Facebook. Thanks to Fondra, my ever-favorite clown, ‘Bubbles’, and her two sidekicks, Mason and Carson.
Bubbles began clowning quite a few years ago as a ministry and has expanded into clowning professionally, as well. She frequents the local hospitals, ministering to both children and adults, as well as ministering in events for her church. Professionally, you can find her clowning around town at local events and fairs, parades and more.
Have you ever wondered what to do with all of that zucchini that seems to come due in the garden, all at once? Participate in the Annual Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor’s From Porch Month. My father in-law’s neighbor (no one knows’ which neighbor it was for sure) left a bag for my in-laws. Thanks,whoever you were!
Stock up on your favorite cherry popsicles and get ready to roast marshmallows, as these two sweet treats are also celebrated the month of August.
Join us (hopefully!) next Tuesday for more tidbits!
His,
Sherri