Roots

~ Delighting in Gardens ~

         

Every spring I am in awe of the miracle of a plant.  How is it that the beauty and structure of each individual plant is bound up in the memory of that ugly root ball in the mud.  As the first sprouts of spring begin to emerge, I often find myself just simply wondering at it all.  You would think after 36 years of spring times that a sprout would become rather mundane.  Not so…

The history of each plant in the garden holds such special meaning.  It almost feels as if those I love dearly who are already in heaven, are still sharing a part of themselves each Spring. 

So it is August.  Why am I writing a post about Spring and new shoots?  Because this is the month that I knew was coming and I am ripping out root balls to share and save for our new property.  I have been blessed beyond measure by the woman buying our home.  She loves plants and understands what it means to have to give up these gardens.  She graciously suggested that I take any special plants with me and to come back next Spring for anything I wanted.  She was in tears with excitement and wonder at the Christmas tree farm we have planted and the heated soil raised bed I am leaving behind.  What a gift to hand this “work of heart” over to someone who will appreciate and understand.

So the pots are lining up for their portions….

I dug my prize delphinium for a dearest friend last night….

Pink blossom strawberries go just down the road to a dearest friend who will always be my neighbor wherever we live J…

When Jordan asks what he can do for my birthday in April and my favorite gift is always truckload of manure he always kinda chuckles.

Gardening is in my blood – I am convinced.  My Grandpa Smoke was a dairy farmer who grew the best sweet corn a person could ever imagine.  Papa tenderly nursed potted rose bushes on his lanai in Hawaii for years. 

  Grandma Ratzsch grew beautiful flowers even though she was allergic to them all and couldn’t enjoy them up close.  My Aunti Ginny has shared hundreds of pounds of treasured root wads and shoots from her Whidbey Island paradises.

Thankful for a gardening heritage that I can pass on to my children~

Thankful for the blessing of roots and shoots that never seem to grow mundane~

Thinking when I get to heaven, I might be honored with the work of tending a garden.

Because for me, being in the garden feels like a foretaste of heaven.

John 15:5~

I am the vine; you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Pending

So...the adventure continues and our house is now pending.  I did a little survey around the family of what that word meant to each of the kids.  Nothing surprised me by their answers but I have been contemplating one in particular for the last few weeks.

"Corban, what does the word pending mean"?

"Well Mom, it is the word that means the time right before you repel down a rock cliff."

Much laughing and teasing followed, but I keep coming back to that cute answer with more meaning that he ever realized.  A house is just a bunch of material objects fit together to make a comfortable space to call home right?  So why does the word pending feel sometimes like we are just about to repel off a cliff?  I believe it is because of phrases like these:

Home is where your heart is

Home Sweet Home

Welcome Home

We have had many conversations with the children lately about the fact that home is where your family is no matter where you lay your head.  Just like the church is not a building and the building should not define the church, so our family should not be defined by where we call home.

We are about to embark on a fun and rather crazy adventure.  We hope to spend the next month packing and preparing to spend the two months after that camping on our Williams Canyon property and building a barn.  Oh the dirt, laughter, scraped knees and smashed fingers to come!  We are excited to share this adventure in pictures each Friday.  I will be passing off the lion share of the photo journaling job to our Samarah Jo.  It will be a little difficult to run a chop saw, manage a nail gun and capture life with the camera.  Please pray for safety for our family as we work hard and play hard these next few months.  We are pending....from the solid rock of Christ who makes all things new.

Open Books

I have been thinking lately....if our family life is to be an encouraging open book, then our lives must be filled with open books.

“Books don't change people; paragraphs do, Sometimes even sentences." John Piper

When Moriah Noel was about five, we started reading "chapter books" as a family.  Jordan and I both grew up listening to our parents read tales of emotion, adventure and suspense.  Some of our fondest memories are of curling up on the couch by the fire and listening to a fantastic story.  Our Givens Family book reading began in 2003 with the classic Little House series.  

This year we are celebrating a decade of chapter book reading.  We have kept a log of all the books we have read together and it totals over 120 stories.  Crazy to think...we didn't plan it but that equals a book a month for the last decade!  According to C.S. Lewis it is time to start over.

“Clearly one must read every good book at least once every ten years.” 

― C.S. Lewis

A partial list of some of our favorites these past ten years follows:

Music ~ Soul Speech

"For the common things

Of every day,

God gave men speech in the 

Common way.

And He gave the poet

Words to reveal

The deeper things men

Think and feel;

But for the heights and depths

No words could reach,

God gave men Music - 

The soul's own speech."

Music.  It is such a part of our family heritage.  Every large family gathering eventually culminates in breaking out the instruments and joining our hearts with memories of good old fashioned tunes.  Whether it is Grandpa Jay's "coupon song" - I'm saving up coupons to get one of those - or Uncle Tom's rendition of "Tom Dooley", the songs are rich with heritage and emotions.  

There are times when the monotony of scales, working over hard measures and tears of frustration rule the moments.  Those moments are so worth it, when there is joy unspeakable in Great Grandpa's eyes as our girls play for him.  There is something precious about watching tears roll down the cheeks of a beloved old man as he listens raptly to a little lady play "Come Thou Fount"  

And then there are the lighter moments...Alabama impersonations, Cinco De Mayo dancing with Jeff singing "Spanish" at the top of his lungs, performing "Ghost Riders" behind his back 

or a little gypsy jazz improvisation with Uncle Corey...

We have been working hard to instill the concept of the word "gift" to our children.  A gift, rightly used, must be stewarded, shared, and practiced regularly.  It has been our prayer these last many years of lessons that the children's music would be something that they could share with others.  By God's grace, we are beginning to see the results of their hard work.  Samarah has the honor of playing at Pybus Market this week.  She is mixing some fun patriotic songs with some soul touching hymns - will you pray with us that her music would be "soul speech" to someone who needs it this week? 

Welcome Home

Posting this a little early as we reflect this weekend on...

Preemie

Oxygen

Congenital Heart Defect

Total Anomalous PulmonaryVenous Return

Airlift

Cardiac Surgical Team

Open Heart Surgery

Chylothorax

Chest Tubes

Allergies - the kind no one had ever seen at Children's before

Pulmonary Embolism

Grace for Today

These were the words that surrounded the beginning days of your life son...days so exhausting and emotionally draining that there were times your daddy and I weren't sure we could do one more.  God's grace was sufficient for every one of the days that you were cared for so carefully until we could whisper the words "lets go home" on July 7th, 2006.  Though we would never choose to repeat this time in the life of our family, we would never trade it away either.  For your daddy and I, it was the refining fire that helped us put life into perspective.  Your name means "set apart for a holy purpose." It was the time when we did the hard heart work of understanding God's sovereignty and what it means to love having you more than we feared loosing you.

 We did our best to carry on as a family unit - living together all six of us - in Seattle.  We shared our time between the Ronald McDonald House and the hospital room.  Your big sister turned 8 while we waited for you to heal, your big brother learned to swim, carp hunt with a bow, and use hand sanitizer at every corner he came to in the hospital :-).  Your sis, Samarah Jo was just 2.  She learned how to take very long showers and that no one would be upset if she used a whole bottle of shampoo.  Those were days filled with the love of our extended family and friends and we are so thankful.

So today we celebrate your homecoming.  Seven years ago today, we traveled back from Seattle together - forever changed.  From that day on I began recounting the gifts of God's grace in our life.  We have come to understand more fully that everything is a gift from God - not just what we would consider pleasurable in this life.  We consider your broken heart a gift.  We consider your fixed heart a gift.  We consider the scars all over your body a gift - to remind us of your story.

Fishing

Dirt Bikes

Rock Climbing

Grand Camp

Hunting

Gospel Community

Hiking with Dad

Airsoft

Stitches

Football

"I love you mom"

These are the" Corban words" that surround us today..

So glad to have you home son!

A Birthday Blessing

Moriah Noel,

The blessing you have been to our family cannot be formulated into words.  You dearest, are one of God’s lavish evidences of grace to us.  Your birth brought a bucketful of new roles to our family.  When your daddy delivered you after more than 43 hours of this momma’s hard work, your arrival initiated firsts for every member of our extended family!

 Your sweet, slender fingers wrapped around ours, had announced to the world that there was a new great-great grandmother, 8 great grandparents, 4 grandparents, 4 uncles and 3 aunties.  You are blessed dear to have a legacy of personal relationship with each of your great grandparents, and grandparents! As you continue in your role of paving the way with firsts for our family we pray that God would bless you richly with more of Him daily. 

As my cybermentor for these past seven years posted recently…”Because there is no true happiness apart from holiness, and there is no true holiness apart from knowing what it means to suffer unhappiness.  It’s through suffering unhappiness that God may beckon you into deeper happiness in Him.  Don’t be afraid.  Because the thing is: I don’t want you to get all A’s in life.  I want you to get life.  I want you to get God.

Your birth was such big news for your daddy's home town 

that even the local gas station announced it!

A.W. Tozer said that you can have as much of God as you want.  It’s wild to think about that: How much of God do you really want?  How happy do you really want to be?  Why would you avoid Him and all your joy in Him – when you could hunger for Him and have as much happiness as you want?   What I am trying to tell you is that no matter where you end up, where the road leads:  You can have as much God as you want.  As much joy in Him as you want.  The real believers relentlessly believe that.  The world or circumstances will try to dupe you differently – but it’s a law as irrefutable as gravity itself:  no matter what – as much God as you want.”

 

Is there anything else worth having or wanting?

What will keep you from doing much good – is caring too much what others think.  This isn’t only a phenomenon of teens.  This is often the foolishness of adults too.  What would the world look like if Christians didn’t care about keeping up with the neighbors but about keeping company with Christ.

Moriah, We can hardly contain our excitement for the growth, purpose, guidance and passions that he Lord has blessed you with this past year.  We are praying that in all your pursuits, you would seek Christ first.  The happiest of birthdays to you – daughter and friend.

Love Mom