Notes from the Ordinary- Vol.1

It's been nearly a year since I last posted a blog. I know this goes against every single blog rule in the book, but I have never really been one to follow all the rules (*wink*). The truth is, a whole lot of life can happen in a year, and sometimes, it isn't quite time to put your heart out there for the world to see right in the midst of it. Discernment dictates that it's best to let things settle before sharing, and it is my firm belief that there is seasoned wisdom in knowing when to be silent and still. For today, I am going to choose to let the "silent" things be, and I will unpack them with you as God leads me. For today, I am gently stepping back into writing publicly, and I will share here in this tiny corner of the internet as heart things stir.

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To catch up a tiny bit, we have experienced several momentous changes in our family this past year. Last November, our oldest daughter was married to a beautifully-hearted young man right here in our home by her daddy. It was a labor of love to prepare for this special day, and having the ceremony in our home was a precious, intimate experience that we will all remember for a lifetime.

This past summer, we helped move my parents 1,200 miles from Colorado to the mid-west. It is currently a sweet time in the life of our family, and my growing-up-too-quickly kids are soaking up the days having their grandparents right around the corner. There is a whole lot of good-old-fashioned spoiling going on doused with buckets of extra laughter. The past year has gifted us precious family treasures, and we do not to take a single moment for granted.


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There have been many things I have processed these past twelve months. There is one thing that has recently percolated to the surface. I am identifying that it might be a contributor to one of the reasons I haven't written. You see, I am quite ORDINARY. There isn't really anything about me that stands out in the crowd. My life is probably considered quite mundane to most. The days are so similar that they run together, and as a busy, homeschooling, stay-at-home mama, I don't really get out of the house as much as I would like to, need to, or should. I don't have any outstanding gifts or talents. Someone else will always be better, faster, stronger, prettier, wiser, smarter, more successful, more capable, more talented, more, more, more. But you know what? It's okay! So often, ordinary people are dismissed, marginalized, or ignored. I am SHOUTING this from the ROOFTOPS that this is a monumental mistake. We ALL have our own beauty to offer, and only you can offer your kind of beautiful to the world, and only I can offer my kind of beautiful. 

WE ALL HAVE BEAUTY TO OFFER EACH OTHER. 

You don't have to be the best at something to be able to offer it as a gift to someone else. Since when did we believe we were worthless if we weren't the best? Our streets, stores, churches, businesses, schools, and homes are full of ordinary people that have tucked their beauty away because they don't think it is worth offering. I am here today to tell you to stop being afraid, dig deep, be brave. Uncover the gift you might be hiding and share it with someone else. If you are a baker, bake cookies for your neighbor. If you sing, sing a song to a loved one. If you are an encourager, speak your uplifting words over those who need your truth. If you paint, paint your joy and share it with a friend. If you are a teacher, teach. If you are a writer, write. If you are a server, serve. 

YOU ARE THE ONLY ORDINARY PERSON THAT CAN DO THESE THINGS IN YOUR VERY OWN WAY, AND THAT MAKES YOU EXTRAORDINARY. 

Let's all choose to take the time to make the world brighter by putting a little bit more of our extraordinary in it. 


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"If you only look at us, you might well miss the brightness. We carry this precious Message around in the unadorned clay pots of our ordinary lives."  (2 Corinthians 4:7 MSG)


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The Pumpkins Came...and...Went

All summer long, I worked tirelessly to help sustain the life of my petunia plants. My heart's desire was to nurse them along... until the pumpkins came. The survival of the petunias became deeply important to me as we have been fighting, in a sense, for our own family's survival. For those that may not know, our family's needs are primarily met by a little eBay business that we started a few years ago. Without going into too much detail, owning and depending on your own small business can be is crazy-making. We ride the waves of a fickle economy and fragile sales trends, and we trust...that there will be enough. Well, often, there isn't, so we listen and look for signs of hope in the everyday whispers from God that it will be okay. Summer is our slowest business time, and my petunias became symbolic of making it through the summer. If they could hold on until the pumpkins came (autumn, when business normally picks up), then so could we. Carrying all of these things in my heart, I parked my vehicle and walked up to our local market. You cannot imagine the relief I felt when I saw huge crates overflowing with pumpkins. The petunias made it. Spindly. Barely. But they did. Whew!

THE PUMPKINS HAD COME!

I felt like... maybe... I could at least breathe in and breathe out. I felt like... maybe... we were going to make it, too. The hope I had in the petunias shifted to the pumpkins. The life-cycle of my beloved petunias was complete, and I felt free to let go and plant fall mums in their place.

The arrival of mums is one of the first indicators that harvest will soon be in full swing. Oh how our souls have longed for this year's autumn harvest. We tried to soak in every hope and encouragement from the arrival of pumpkins and the planting of mums, because we barely made it out of summer alive. Actually, I am not convinced we really did, but harvest time would bring new grain into the storehouse, and new hope to our souls. Right?

Two short weeks after I purchased the pumpkins, I walked outside to discover that they had rotted.

THE. PUMPKINS. ROTTED.

My heart sank to my toes. Tears quarreled with anger and won. I couldn't begin to imagine what this symbolism meant for us. We were slammed with discouragement, and I threw my pumpkins in the garbage. 

My dear friend, Carrie, began messaging me the chronicle of her own petunias sometime around mid-August. Too much rain? Too much heat? Were they going to make it? She would send me an update once every week or so. Our hearts and souls and hopes were both engrossed. Towards the end of September, her messages to me were more timely than she would ever realize. She had given up deadheading her flowers, but they were still hanging on. Her pumpkins weren't rotten, either. {wink~wink~smile} By mid-October, she shared with me how she felt bad for giving up on her petunias. Even still, they were prospering.

This was the last picture that Carrie sent me on October 24th. She included with it this description:

"Long after the pumpkins came, way longer than what was expected, and long, long after all hope was given up..." Her flowers were still blooming.

This truth prodded my soul, but my petunias had long been thrown away, my pumpkins were compost, and our lives... sigh... just sigh... Where was our harvest?

The very same day I received the picture of my dear friend's still-flourishing flowers, I walked outside to refill the bird feeders that were on our patio. When I turned to head back into the house, this is what I saw. 

God bless this tomato plant. Ragged. Frayed. Tired. Bedraggled. We had long given up hope on this, as well, much like Carrie and her petunias.

Every branch, whether appearing dead or alive, was laden with tomatoes. This precious plant had more than 60 tomatoes to gift us.  

My thoughts were so consumed with the petunias and pumpkins, I had lost interest in giving this tomato in our backyard proper care. I had abandoned it, yet, against all odds, it was still working hard to bear fruit.

Hope was trying to nudge me from somewhere I had never even considered, and I needed fresh perspective.

I WASN'T LOOKING FOR HOPE IN THE RIGHT PLACE.

Something else wise Carrie said to me, "God's message is everywhere." Yes. Yes, it is. When all appears to be forlorn, open your eyes, and look elsewhere.

Determined not to let rotten pumpkins haunt me, I took my kids to the pumpkin farm to choose fresh-from-the-field pumpkins.

And at the dinner table, I couldn't have been more poignantly reminded that a form of harvest was right there in front of me.

Our life circumstance still hasn't changed, but we are hanging on and trusting for harvest, even in the eBay business. 

I came across this box of flower bulbs at the pumpkin farm yesterday. I didn't notice it until I got it home.

Thoughts that have been swirling around in continual prayers for weeks finally united. My eyes were opened and I chose to see hope here in this new place. 

FALL IS FOR PLANTING.

Maybe...just maybe, for the Sargent family, the harvest will still come? I HAVE TO BELIEVE that it will, and WE MUST PERSEVERE. Maybe...just maybe, you are waiting, too? Even though fall is typically thought of as harvest time, right now we are going to choose to plant, wait, and trust. 

HARVEST. WILL. COME.

Until the Pumpkins Come...

I love petunias.

If I had to choose one flower that reminds me of my childhood and my green-thumb grandmother, petunias would be that flower. Every spring for as long as I can remember, I have grown killed (sigh) petunias in honor/memory of The Farmer's Wife. This year, I was bound and determined not to murder them by mid-summer. 

I thoroughly researched, and watched several expert YouTube videos about how to properly care for petunias. I discovered that I had been pruning them incorrectly, and maybe...just maybe...I had a chance of getting my beloved flowers out of the month of July alive. I devoted my efforts to the two large potted petunia plants that greet you at our front door. I have hoped through the hours of deadheading (such an odd term when you are trying to keep your plant from dying!) that my care would be enough for them to at least reach the end of August. 

To properly prune a petunia blossom, you need to remove the entire base of the blossom, not just the spent blossom itself. When the rains come, it can be particularly difficult, because many spent blossoms will fall off, leaving the start of a seed pod behind.

I have eagle-eye searched and gently fingered through stems and sticky blossoms of my petunias to find left-behind seed pods.

Among the leaves, they can be tricky to spot, especially as the plant grows and thickens. When I discover seed pods I have missed, a wave of panic floods me, and I go over my flowers several times more so I can rest knowing that I removed all the pods. 

If a seed pod accidentally gets left on the plant, it sends a message to the petunia to "set" seed and stop growing flowers. Stems become spindly and wither, eventually shutting down a thriving plant. I know this is the plan. This is the natural way of things. It's okay when this happens, but I don't want this to happen until the end of summer. 

I DON'T WANT THIS TO HAPPEN UNTIL THE PUMPKINS COME...

If you have been following our story, you know that summer is a hard time for an ebay business owner. We are hanging on with mustered hope that we will, also, make it out of the summer alive. The quiet hours that I have spent watering and pruning have slipped into prayer hours. Prayers, unintentionally, turned my precious petunias into a symbol of perseverance and hope that we, too, might make it until the pumpkins come. 

A few days ago, I discovered a little Audrey II (from Little Shop of Horrors) staring me down. Jaw set, I immediately removed her before she could shout at me, "Feed me, Seymour!" I kept thinking that this was NOT going to happen on my watch. How much more does God care that WE make it out of the summer alive than I care about my silly plant? I could almost hear God whisper to me, "Not on my watch, Shanda."

NOT ON MY WATCH.

In brutal honesty, one of the potted petunias is getting a tad spindly, the stems are becoming more stiff than lush, and the deep green leaves have turned to a pre-death-yellow hue. In further brutal honesty, we are getting a little spindly, too. But as I sit here on my patio swing writing this, crickets and cicadas serenade my words, cooler evening air comforts, and the sunset swirls in pre-autumn pink and gold over the rooftop of my house. Fall is just around the corner, hope is hanging on, and...

THE PUMPKINS ARE COMING.

VERY SOON.

"Lift up your head...I know things were bad but now they're okay." (lyrics from "Suddenly Seymour")

The Right Place at the Right Time and Pay it Forward Perspective

A few weeks ago, IronMan turned... ahem... forty-five. With all of the changes our family has been through, and a lot of the struggles, too, last winter, IronMan took on a part-time job at Home Depot to help fill in some gaps. It just so happened that this birthday was the very first birthday since I have known him that he had to work, and it also happened to be quite a long shift. I wanted to try to make his birthday extra special and have everything done ahead of time, so when he walked in at 9:45 p.m. from work, he could relax, and we could immediately spoil him.

The first matter of birthday planning is usually the cake. Our oven wasn't working at the time, so I decided to make an ice cream cake. To make it extra special, I wanted to make it from scratch. IronMan loves mint-chocolate, so I thought a grasshopper ice cream cake would be perfect. I checked the cupboard for the needed ingredients and headed to the store for the fill-ins. I went to three different stores, and couldn't find the needed creme de cacao, so I decided we would have to make the cake without it. The clock was sufficiently dissolving my minutes away into some unknown twilight zone, and I was now in super-fast-mom-go-mode. When I arrived at home, I made the slightly messy, slightly complicated crust for the ice cream cake. Perfect! I put it in the freezer and quickly got to work on the filling. The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of creme de menthe. I should have listened to my gut, but I'd never made this recipe before. I checked, double checked, triple checked and quadruple checked the recipe. Even though it seemed like way too much, I trusted the web, and in went the 2 full tablespoons. I taste tested the filling, and let me tell you, I think my tongue is still burning. It was the potency of Five Brand Rain gum times a hundred. HOOOOOEY! Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Sigh. Into the garbage and on to plan B. I headed back to the store with young IronMan in search of mint cookie ice cream to go with the perfect crust that was chilling in the freezer. Of course, the store didn't have any type of cookie ice cream in stock, so plan C, and I grabbed mint chip. Rushing past the produce to get to the checkout, Young IronMan asked if we could please get a watermelon, so we grabbed one. I safely nested the watermelon in a blanket in the back of our Durango, and prayed the ice cream wouldn't melt while we stopped at the dollar store to pick up balloons.

The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and SEVENTH balloon choices I wanted were out of stock. Ugh. Finally, my son said, "Mom, just get the monkey one." A monkey balloon? Good grief. We needed to get home, so I hesitantly asked the attendant to prepare a monkey balloon, and young IronMan and I hurried to the checkout line. There were two customers ahead of us. The first was a well-put-together lady, probably in her mid-sixties. She had pretty, silver-gray hair, nicely done make-up, and a beautiful, turquoise-blue silk shirt on. The lady directly in front of us was nearly her same age, but opposite. She had long, scraggly, half-bleached hair, a mismatched outfit, and a ragged handbag. The first lady had a cart completely full of items: crossword puzzle books, yellow silk flowers, magazines, a small get well balloon etc. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Wouldn't you know it? The first lady decided to pay her total bill, $37.45, (Yes, she had thirty-five items in her cart) with piles of nickels, dimes, and quarters. She poured her change out on the counter and began to count out one-dollar piles of change. Right up to this very moment in time, with the exception of the perfect crust waiting in the freezer, my day was frittered away by frustration after frustration, and I really needed to get home to finish my birthday preparations. BUT  I would quickly find out that I was exactly where I needed to be. Had the day not clunked around earlier...

I WOULD HAVE MISSED THE BEAUTIFUL THAT GOD WANTED ME TO WITNESS.

I WAS IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME.

The pretty, silver-haired lady counted out twenty-seven dollar-piles of coins. She looked at the cashier and asked, "What was my total bill, again?" She was out of coins. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. She looked at the items in her cart and wilted. She started to look through bags, and was having a hard time deciding what to put back. She somberly told the cashier, "I can't put anything back. I am going to have to go home and get more money to pay for my bill. Can you hold my order?" The ragamuffin lady directly in front of me shifted on her feet. She looked at the cashier and quietly asked what the silver-haired lady's total bill was. She pulled her checkbook from her tattered bag, and started to write out a check for the total amount. Distraught, the silver-haired lady was already leaving the store. The cashier ran to get her to tell her that she could collect her bags, and her piles of change. Her entire purchase had been paid for. The silver-haired lady came back with tears streaming down her cheeks. She told the ragamuffin lady in front of me that the items were for her son. He was in stage four cancer and only had a few weeks to live. She wanted to bring him some sunshine. I imagined those yellow silk flowers in a sweet vase cheering the room where her son stayed. I imagined him sitting up in a hospital bed propped with pillows with his mother beside him talking through crossword puzzle clues and looking at magazines together. I imagined the get-well balloon beside him offering hope that wouldn't exactly come, and a mother's breaking heart while trying to keep a smile on her face for her son's sake during his last days. Suddenly, my clock stopped ticking and reminding me that I had to hurry. The tick-tock was silent. As I pulled out of the Dollar Tree parking lot, Silver-haired Lady and Ragamuffin Lady were exchanging phone numbers and hugging. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I know I was allowed to witness something just a little bit holy.

WHEN YOU PAY IT FORWARD, YOU MIGHT BE BLESSING MORE PEOPLE THAN YOU ORIGINALLY INTENDED TO BLESS.

When we pulled in the driveway, young IronMan opened the tailgate of our vehicle. The watermelon had freed itself from its blanket nest and fell splat on our driveway. I couldn't help but laugh. My son said it was an awesome experience. ;-)
I salvaged the half of the watermelon that didn't land face down on the concrete. When I got into the house, the meat I was going to grill wasn't even partly thawed. It seemed like everything that I had hoped to do was sabotaged, but somehow it didn't matter quite as much as it did earlier in the day.

A LITTLE BIT OF HOLY CHANGES YOUR PERSPECTIVE.

Despite the earlier frustrations of the day and expectations dashed, I did the best I could do to be ready to celebrate IronMan's birthday. Instead of being frazzled, our atmosphere was peace. We were here. We were surrounded by the gifts that mean the most. We had all of our family around us, plus two more special souls. The decorations got put up (even the monkey balloon was okay), the ice cream cake was fabulous, and dinner was a little bit later than the 9:30 p.m. I was aiming for, but really, what more could we ask for? The tick-tock was hushed and it doesn't matter what time you celebrate. The point is that you DO celebrate. IronMan turned forty-five, and we celebrated him. A mother across town won't get another birthday with her son, and a lady who sacrificed to pay it forward gained a new friend. Yes, friends, a little bit of holy, indeed, changes your perspective.


SOMETIMES...IT CHANGES EVERYTHING

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I Don't Want to Do This Anymore... Broken Hope

Just a few days prior to the incident, I'd mustered up the courage, and hung hope on a galvanized pole suspended, quite fragily, between doubt and belief. It wasn't ONLY about the birds that I had hoped would find the Mason jar feeders we'd hung on our milk can contraption. It was so much deeper than that. It was about the birds that didn't find the feeders, and how we had hoped that life would come in some form right to our backyard. And...It did. Encouragement finally came and successfully muffled doubt when the birds found the seed we had lovingly placed for them. (If you would like to read the full story, you may do so HERE.)


Five short days after the birds came, when hope had a heartbeat, an unexpected gust of wind whipped underneath our red patio umbrella and shot it like a weapon directly towards the milk-can-clothesline-pole-miniature-bird-sanctuary-thingy. Sigh. Hope alive crashed into a thousand pieces of glass on the ground, and birdseed scattered... EVERYWHERE. IronMan and I stood in disbelief. It felt like we had mustered all of the hope between us to allow this precious contraption to become a symbol of hope to our aching, wondering hearts. I looked at IronMan, and I said, "I am done. I am so done."

HERE LIES GOOD OLD HOPE... DEADER THAN A DOORNAIL... WHICH IS PRETTY DARN DEAD.

I don't want to do this anymore. This roller-coaster of hope, death, hope, death, hope, death, hope, death. We are tired...so tired.

 NO! I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE!

I am tired of something going wrong every turn of the corner. I am tired of things NOT being in our favor. I am tired of having to fight for everything. EVERYTHING. I am tired of feeling like we have an enemy attacking us, and we never seem to catch a breath. I am tired of working hard and not getting the full benefits of that hard work. I am tired of seeing my IronMan work endless hours and there not being enough to make ends meet. I am tired of praying and praying and praying that we will make it, and we always end up on the edge. I am tired of wondering why prayers seemingly go unanswered, and why God is allowing this...

HE HAS TO BE ALLOWING THIS.


What do you do when the vulnerable, precious hope you have lifted to God crashes, and all that is left are useless shards laying on the ground? Honestly, this has been indicative of the last 18 years of our journey. We are beginning to wonder if something is wrong with us. I have to believe that I am not alone in that question. What hard are you facing? What tragedies are in your past that cause you to question, too? I want you to know, whatever it is that haunts from the past or weighs on you presently, or a combination of the two, you are not alone.

YOU ARE NOT ALONE!

So what are we to do about this? As much as I would like to crawl under a rock, find a cave to hide in, or run off deep into the mountains with my family, we can't do that. I know it might not always feel this way, but...

NO MATTER HOW BAD IT IS, IT COULD BE WORSE. IT REALLY COULD.

I am not diminishing the ache, grief, shame, wounds, or struggles you are facing. I promise. But I know even in the midst of the deepest of griefs, even compounded griefs, there are still GIFTS. There is still LIGHT. We can find HOPE.

I know. I know that it probably feels like it cost you just about everything to hold your hands cupped together with little bits of hope dripping through your fingers to ask God, one more time, to please show up and do something, and it hurts when it feels like hope dissolved.

We have to dig deep, dear ones. We must. We cannot let broken hope have the last word. We have to look at those jagged pieces of shattered hope and find a way back... AGAIN.

I looked at those shattered pieces of glass on the ground, and I couldn't even cry. I felt numb. It was such a minor thing in the grand scheme of things, but it felt like the last thing my weary heart could handle. The broken glass pieces and hope of tending to sparrows tumbled on the ground right along with my heart. All I could do was shake my head in disbelief. IronMan bent down and carefully picked up hundreds of pieces of broken Mason jars. I know this hurt him, too, but he scrounged around enough of something to at least begin to pick up the disaster. The next morning, he was the first customer in the store where we purchased the bird feeders. He found  one last Mason jar feeder hiding on the bottom of a shelf. It was, literally, the very last one. We combined two of the broken bird feeders to make one complete feeder.

WE PICKED UP WHAT WAS BROKEN, DUG SOUL-DEEP, AND FOUND A WAY TO OFFER A FRAGMENT OF HOPE, YET AGAIN. IT FELT LIKE TAINTED HOPE, BUT NONETHELESS, IT WAS HOPE.

I am choosing to believe that even if God has been allowing this hard journey, He must be forging something in the deep. The alternative is to believe nothing at all, and that doesn't seem like a good option to me. Even in the midst of some extremely dark circumstances, I have been carried by Him. I also have to believe that somehow, some way, even if it doesn't feel okay, we will make it, and you will make it. We may cry a river and heave from the depths of our beings, we may feel angry, frustrated, devastated, wounded...but at some point we will be breathing again, and sometime the darkness will lift.

FIGHTING FOR HOPE IS THE BEST DEFENSE AGAINST THE DARKNESS THAT WE HAVE. IT IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR.

I took the leftover top of one of the broken Mason jar feeders and made an itty-bitty lantern, about the same size as the hope we could offer. I put a tea light in it to shine against the darkness that comes when everything presses against hope. We don't yet know the outcome of our current circumstance, but we are trusting, and with hands cupped, we have lifted to God in our broken-best the most hope that we could offer...itty-bitty.

"And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with love." (Romans 5:5 NLT)


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