Heirloombulbgirl

Tag: christianity

  • The Rugged Dreamers

    Today is America’s birthday. 250 years of freedom.

    When I imagine what the word “freedom” looks like, I instantly think of this photo. Montana was once a world that existed vastly untouched and still just a territory. The mountainous environment was vast and sparkling clean. The human footprint had yet to interfere with God’s created beauty. Mankind stepped into this relatively unknown world, for brief moments, to simply taste the essence of ultimate physical freedom. There is a rugged beauty to this photo. Words cannot describe the majesty one feels in environments such as this. Maybe that’s why there is a bit of the rugged dreamer in all of us. We want to taste and inhale that incredible physical freedom of the photo. What a vast contrast to the modern world of the 21st century!
    Freedom looks different now.

    Freedom, when the word is dissected, is the ability to live without the constraints of the outside world or other humans. We celebrate freedom, but most of us don’t actually know what true freedom is. We can’t fathom what living *without* freedom even looks like. In many parts of the world, freedom is as foreign to them as the rugged mountain dreamers on horseback. Even as I type this little blog, I am keenly aware that some young women around the world are being beaten and killed for simply doing what I am doing…speaking my mind.

    Freedom, in the simplest form, is the ability to simply be. I can live as I want to live, marry whom I choose and have children, play and sing with exultation, worship the Lord and pray without fear….fear of being found out, disowned or even killed.
    Imagine that. Being killed for who you choose or not choose to love or the God you choose to worship.
    America was born so that someone like me is free. Free to write, free to grow things, free to love, free to speak, and the freedom to not say anything at all. I am free. I am that rugged dreamer on horseback.

    America, the home of the free, has had some incredible stories the past…the Western expansion, the Great Depression, World Wars, Ellis Island, the Pilgrims, the Civil War, 9/11 and so, so many more incredible moments in history. Each unique period has tried our character and tested our fortitude, but we have never lost our freedom. Americans, the rugged dreamers, have continued to desire to create a better future for their children and the next generations. Though we may not always understand each other, having different life experiences, in the end we are still free. For that, I will never cease to be thankful.

    May each of us remember what true freedom is.

    May we not get weighed down, and always hold on to that “rugged dreamer” inside each of us.

    May we be grateful and thankful for the freedoms we do have.

    May we pray without ceasing for those who don’t have freedom. Life looks very different for them.

    Happy Birthday America!

  • The Fallow Ground

    Fallow ground….A long period of just nothingness in hopes of restoration.
    Apparently, it is a good farming technique that allows the land to rest and recuperate after numerous hard farming seasons. Waiting on fallow ground to recover can actually take years. Those are hard seasons to wait upon.
    I don’t like those seasons. I honestly don’t like to wait. I wanted my Tasha Tudor gardens planted “now” (or yesterday). But, in my studio’s case, the fallow ground was all I had to work with.
    I grumbled, complained and begrudgingly stuck salvaged flower bulbs anywhere I could, completely avoiding eye contact with the land of nothingness. But things changed after the flood. ALL the gardens at the flooded house had to be relocated. I had to look eye to eye with that piece of fallow ground and begin restoration.


    Restoration of the fallow land was indeed a lofty goal. Quite frankly, I wasn’t sure if I was up to the calling. The long “wait” was just too long. The Lord was actually trying to do good things in the fallow ground, but my heart was too hardened to take notice. I needed more time in the “wait”. Maybe I’m just stubborn and didn’t have eyes to see what He was doing. Maybe I was used to grumbling over the imperfections, or maybe the Lord just wanted me to look upon stillness for a bit to watch the restoration unfold. Whatever the case, I was stuck with a whole lot of nothing. Literally…..a house lot of nothing but stickers, rocks and thorns.

    To the gardener, fallow ground gives the field a chance to rest. Over planting and plowing, (or in my case, chicken and duck grazing) causes stress to the earthly balance of nature’s ecosystem. The delicate world of microorganisms is destroyed and the soil becomes depleted. Letting the earth simply rest allows restoration and balance to simply step in, and work the soil back to heath naturally. The “wait” is the hardest part.

    Here are a few steps I took to begin the restoration of the fallow land.

    Step one….I had to be ok with the fact that my garden was not Pintrist-perfect. This sounds so silly, but my mental game was the largest hurdle I had to cross (just ask my husband). I struggled when I walked into the back part of the studio grounds and saw nothingness. “I remember when my other gardens had rich soil full of earthworms, but *this* land is_______” I had a lot of choice words that I could fill in the blank. The conditions of the land played a negative mental trip on me. I didn’t like the ground I had to work with, so I simply gave up on that part of the studio. I had to step back and rethink my vision. So, step one is simple…a much needed attitude adjustment in the mind of the gardener.

    Step two….let the wild things grow. After stepping back from my negative attitude, I began to see the fallow ground in a different light. Little native flowers were appearing out of nowhere. My favorite flower to come on the scene was Stork’s Bill, a beautiful purple flower to emerge in early Spring. The seeds are fascinating to children and truly do look like a stork’s bill. I even had adorable little, native rain lilies appear like they owned the place. Why had I never seen them before? I slowly encouraged the good natives to grow as I pulled up the stickers and thorns that had choked out the flowers and overrun the land. What is it with thorny things that love delapitated conditions?!

    Step three…pull out the stones and rocks that weighed the potential gardens down. Nothing grows in stone. Even people avoid stony personalities. After digging in the fallow ground, I found piles of underground stone that had been dumped onto the land. Apparantly my studio grounds had once been a dumping ground for unwanted rubble. How apropos. I dug the little pieces of rock and created a pathway throughout the property. The more I dug, the more little native flowers appeared. The larger rocks were used to create garden beds. True fallow land is complete rest, but I felt the nudge to “just do something” in the long wait.

    Step four….just keep digging. The road to restoration was long, and for many days, I was tired. I was tired of filling up my bucket of stickers after violin lessons. Tired of my hands hurting. Tired of digging and finding only rock. Tired of looking at nothingness. Just tired. But the Lord stepped in, as He always does, and quietly whispered “Just keep digging”. I’ve realized that the restoration of the fallow ground wasn’t just a destination, but a journey. Every day, I watch the redemptive process in the land I once called fallow. Every day I wake up excited to see new flowers. Every day I hope to find more worms in the earth and butterflies in the air. Every day is a journey.

    ”Break up your fallow ground and do not sow among thorns.” Jeremiah 4:3

    The beauty of the Lord’s doing wasn’t intended for hardened hearts or thorny ground. I had to wait, during the process of restoration, to remove thorns and rocks that only choked out the good things to come.
    Happy Gardening, my friends. Even in the fallow ground, the Lord is ever present, doing a great and mighty work in the land.