Sew, sew, sew

As I have expressed before, sewing and creating in general are a great form of therapy for me.  That said, I have been sewing and crocheting like crazy.  My focus as you can imagine, has been making baby wipes and burp cloths as well as everyday cloth napkins which I have realized I truly advocate. Some of the items have been placed in my etsy shop, while other items I have been able to give away as gifts.  Making and then being able to give helps my heart.

What helps your heart heal when life hits you with something unpleasant?

My Love of Gardening...

...grows every year.  Each season growing herbs and vegetables provides stress relief, education and food.  I hope to always be able to have a garden no matter where we live.  The top photo shows the first items pulled from out plot, while the bottom shot shows what is to come.  Have you ever gardened?  What did it teach you?  What is your favorite food to grow?

Special Words Can Touch Anyone

A good friend sent me the following email this morning.  I am so thankful for her, her friendship and her kind and truthful words.  As a result, I thought of my faithful readers (all seven of you) and wanted to share her heart with you also.  We all have trials, rough days and patches where we fear it will never end.  Read the below email and let the words sink in and comfort you from the inside out.

Good Morning,
Just thinking of you this morning and wanted to share something I learned at Church last Sunday that hit home with me. The opposite of faith is not disbelief, it's fear. So alot of times when I dont have faith that my situation will improve it's really fear. I fear my heart won't be content again or that pain will always persist. That's the devils work... Fear is his greatest weapon. Just wanted to share that with you and remind you that God didn't create us with a heart of fear- we are much more brave than that because of Him!

You are greiving well- don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But also remember-

"It's going to be okay in the end, if it's not okay, it's not the end." Unknown

Your in our thoughts and prayers.
Love you

Loving on a Friend

With having lost two children, my husband and I have been asked by others how they can then love on someone that has also experienced a loss.  A wise woman sent me this link to the following blog and in the land of grieving, it is priceless.  It is a lot of reading, but as an active griever, I agree with what she is saying.  Also, this can pertain to more than losing a baby or child, but contains good principles overall for loving on folks.

With the morning sun rising, I was reading an excerpt from Spurgeon and Alcorn's We Will See God.  I enjoyed the following lines, "You could not describe Heaven except by borrowing the things of Earth to symbolize it, and this shows that there is a real likeness between them.  What is Heaven?  It is a Paradise, or a garden.  Walk amid your fragrant flowers and think of Heaven's bed of spices."  I find comfort in this text.  Since Matt and I have lost both our sons, I have found much comfort in gardening and even sitting outside in silence and listening to nature's language.  

Why the photo of basil?  Have you ever run your fingertips through basil?  Within a matter of seconds, the herb emits the most wonderful smell that tickles and pleases your sense of smell.  Is a bit of Heaven in that experience?

Today...an educational post!  If you have recently bought spearmint plants for your garden, take all of them back but one.  Spearmint is a perennial, returns year after year, and if you snap off a sprig and stick it in water, within a handful of days, you will see tiny roots.  Spearmint will re-root itself.  The new roots in the photos above are hard to see, but they are there.  I am going to let them grow for about another week and then put the plant in its new home of potting soil and relocate it to the sunny deck.  I will probably split the mama plant a couple of more times to get enough spearmint to make mojitos throughout the Summer.  :)

I was recently told that when someone gets down on their life, they think of our life and miraculously feel better.  Umm...that is not cool in my book.  Granted, they did say it directs them to pray for us as well, but I don't want my life to influence someone to feel better about their own.  Do you know what I mean?  It was said in a way of, "I am feeling down today about my position in life.  Oh, wait!  Thank goodness our life isn't like Sarah and Matt's.  I feel better now."  Am I making sense?  I hope so.

I am so angry.

I am very hurt.

I feel defeated.

My arms are empty.

Why am I here?

What is my purpose?

I want to run away.

I hate...

My latest comfort is silence.

Listening to the birds.

Watching the wind in the trees.

Pulling weeds in the garden.

Samuel Keith went home to be with Jesus during the early morning hours of May 29th.  We later gave birth and met him at 8:19pm and tearfully said 'goodbye'.  He was beautiful at seventeen weeks gestation.  He was tiny, 6 oz., yet had fingernails and every other feature that we have as living, walking beings.  

 

Life does not start when science gives it the go ahead.  Only One can begin life.  If we had done what the doctors has advised, we would have induced labor and ultimately killed Samuel, as he continued to have a strong heartbeat even after my water broke on May 18th.  God gave us eleven more days with him.  Eleven!  Eleven beautiful days that I would not trade for anything!  Eleven precious days that would have been thrown away had we listened to science and humans.  Days given to reading Samuel stories about Jesus, singing to him, calling him by name, feeling a couple tiny kicks and welcoming the community in to know him.  Doctors cannot give us that, did not want to give us that, but God did.

 

We are now back home, trying to heal and once again my body is ready to feed and nourish a baby that is not with us.  I am in physical pain from my calves to the top of my head and down to my fingertips.  Our hearts are broken, again, and we are struggling with what all of this means and what our purpose is in this life.   

Jumping Back on the Cutting Cost Train

Okay.  It is time to get back down to business.  I am at the tail-end of my first trimester, my morning sickness, which has had absolutely nothing to do with the a.m. this go around, has subsided and my energy levels are back up to a degree.  So what does that mean for us?   Well, first off, I need to start grocery shopping and therefore, cooking again.  I enjoy cooking and like to do so from scratch, so if my work schedule is not crazy, I look forward to getting back in to this habit.  I know Matt will appreciate it.  Another area that will think fondly of me cooking again is our budget!  That said, I discovered a way to rid the house, the grocery list and budget of the added expense of dryer sheets.  I realize I just wrote several sentences on cooking and no, we do not eat dryer sheets.  I have done research on this before and found suggestions of using a tennis ball or balled up tin foil, but I found a link today for making your own dryer sheets that resemble balls of yarn.  I am pretty excited about making these and even more pumped that they can last up to seven years.  Matt will be thrilled that it will make me use up some of my yarn scraps. :)  Also, I read that these cut down in amount of time it takes to dry laundry because they absorb some of the moisture.  That means less electricity is used, therefore, less dinero to pay the bills.  So, "The Sleepy Time Gal" blog, thank you for sharing such a great idea!