3Martins' Updates

Dear Friends,  

Thank you all so much for the cards, calls, emails and visits for my birthday! Best birthday I’ve ever had, I think. Or maybe I was just more alive to how good it was to be alive!  

Charlie gave me a Great Companions Gardening book, and Shayley drew some Korean, Japanese, Chinese and Russian dragons (this after she became enamored with a book called, The Year of Impossible Goodbyes, about Korea just before the Korean War.) She also gave me a letter she wrote, imagining what a young drummer boy may have written to his family in the Civil War.  

I guess my memory went down hill quickly upon turning 40. That very afternoon I forgot a meeting I was supposed to attend!  The funny thing was I was so proud of myself for finally finding the time to get my flu shot that afternoon!  

Friday afternoon I started reading the gardening book, and in the joy of the falling snow and pages of plant friends, my list of plantings for this year’s gardens grew and grew. Thinking back to grandma’s pies, rhubarb seemed like a good idea, even though it takes a few years to get established. So, too, did celery since Shayley’s been eating so much of it lately. I pulled out the pile of recent seed catalogs. Wouldn’t a dwarf fig tree be great, to have those figs like we use to get at Charlie’s brother’s house in Portsmouth?  

Saturday morning, then, I woke up all congested with a sore throat, etc. Not feeling like our usual rounds of playing, I declared to Shayley that she should watch TV as I was going to rest. By the time it quit snowing and she and Charlie  

The snowman made in the blessed image of Dad

were outside building a snow man, I decided I would plan this year’s gardens in earnest. Between a cold that hit me quickly and an unhappy tummy, my mind and wild aspirations for plantings shrunk back down to practical. The rhubarb would require giving up some strawberry space. And would I really do the blanching that celery requires? And I’d tried a dwarf fig tree before, but forgot to remove it from it’s dormant spot in the basement come spring.  

Last night, too, I figured out that it wasn’t a cold I had, but allergies. Charlie and Shayley had given Tater a much needed bath on Friday and I had dried and brushed him. He had lingered all day inside to dry. It hadn’t happened immediately, but by yesterday I sneezed whenever I got near him. I guess to my nose, a dirty dog is better than clean! 

 We did our own little worship service this morning, since our church service was cancelled. Charlie and I took turns reading the Scripture for today, provided by our Pastor, and Shayley played music and did children’s church. Her sermon was on vegetables. She showed a picture of a variety of radishes and asked us which was the juiciest. We pointed to the deepest red ones. She responded that actually we couldn’t tell just by looking.One of the passages Charlie read was from Luke, where Jesus tells a tired and frustrated Simon Peter where to lower his fishing nets. Simon Peter replies that they’ve fished all night to no avail, but he relents to do as Jesus said. He then hauls up more fish than his nets can hold. This is how Jesus first called disciples.The other verses Charlie read were the commissioning of Isaiah. In Isaiah’s vision, God describes utter desolation of the land, but concludes, “But as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down, so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.”The two passages I read were from Psalm 138 and I Corinthians 15. The Psalm begins “I will praise you, O Lord, with all my heart . . . . When I called, you answered me; you made me bold and stouthearted.” Then it says, “. . . Though the Lord is on high, he looks upon the lowly, but the proud he knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, you preserve my life . . . .” And from Corinthians, Paul reminds of the essence of the gospel–Christ’s resurrection–”that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to Scriptures,” and that he appeared to many then.What message emerges from these things? I’ve paused to ask Charlie and Shayley. From her radish lesson, Shayley says that some radishes are large and some juicy, but none are better than the other–just like people. From the Scripture lessons, Charlie concludes that out of great loss and devastation, hope and grace survive and bring up new shoots of life. And so, the grace and hope doesn’t come from us, but from God through us, no matter how large or juicy.The snow and frozen ground cover the gardens for now. But hidden in the bag of last year’s sweet potatoes, are beautiful pinkish slips of new life. Ah, new life at 40!! 

Much love, 

Lydeana 

Tater loves being all wrapped up when he's wet.