Hi! I am so glad you’re here! Welcome to the garden! Today we’re planting soul seeds. Since my husband is back, I can tell you… he just had a little over a two week work trip. I did not have a post last week because I was truthfully exhausted. I had a lot on my plate managing the homestead and I did not have it in me during the late hours to work my thoughts. I rested instead of pumped out another post because I knew it would not be my best. It would have been something to give, just to do it and that is not how I want to present myself. Being fully transparent and showing up as myself means giving myself the opportunity to pause something and come back to it!
Okay so when hubby got home and we gave him the tour of everything we had been working on while he was gone, I said, “We’re just over here surviving! We survived the trip!” He looked at me with the biggest grin and said, “Honey you’re thriving. You have accomplished so many things and I am so proud of you!” That’s when it hit me… We sure did thrive. Not only did my little one have the most amazing few weeks, every animal was present, accounted for and healthy, and we got so many projects done! I see so much survival content out there… Do this to survive another day with your kids/animals/job/task…etc. Do that if you want to continue to function in any aspect of life, you name it, someone has a hack. To survive means to remain alive or in existence (Thank you Mr. Webster). Google Oxford Languages states that surviving is to continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship (I literally googled survive definition here for reference). Whenever a spouse goes out of town the routine is changed, the help is changed, everything is changed so I would argue this would entail some hardship of sorts. (I know there are many worse kinds of hardships and I am not discrediting those, this is a specific example.) As you may know from browsing around our little world on here, we have an older but well taken care of home on some acreage with animals and gardens. We, most importantly, have a little love that is the light of our life. If you care for children, you know how challenging and rewarding this is. With those few things being said, we have A LOT going on that requires our attention throughout every day (and that’s okay! That’s by design :)).
Our usual routine when my husband goes for his standard work day is that when we wake up, all of the outdoor animals are handled/cared for. This allows us to have a little bit of a “slower” morning where we can make our breakfast and do a little learning/reading/playing before charging into our active days. When my husband comes home in the evenings, we typically do the nighttime routine together (feeding everyone, locking in the defenseless ones, taking off fly protection gear, etc). My husband is also an avid dishwasher so as you can imagine, when he is not present, the dishes are quite a task for the one over here doing all of the dirtying of the dishes. I bring up these couple of aspects to point out that, clearly when he is gone, the ship must still sail on, but it’s a little lighter in shipmates. At the end of the day, I am typically a person that says, “It may not seem like much but we did get a lot accomplished today” and then I will list off what we have done, thinking it is not really anything. My husband always replies with, “Honey are you serious? I have no idea how you do all of that!” I personally put a lot of pressure on myself to do things so that I won’t be classified as lazy or God forbid, not ‘earning’ my way through my day. That is completely self-imposed, and something I’m working on… Anyone else?
When your routine gets changed for a short segment of time, it would be easy to just do things to get by because you know it will go back in a few weeks. I am happy to state… we did not just get by. We worked our process, we fixed anything that may have come up, we ate well, we played often, we had big feelings, we loved each other and rested well. I am not saying we did not have any bad moments, because boy did we…. the big feelings are BIG around here people! But we do not allow those hard moments to define our whole day. If we did that, we would not accomplish anything and we would literally be miserable. Most importantly, my little love was well cared for, but our animals were also happy, safe and accounted for at the end of each day!
Mid-post pause for a little story time for a fix it situation that turned out funny but could have definitely not gone the way it did. For my military families, the TDY curse is for real in this family. My little love requested pasta and we absolutely love to make homemade pasta (recipe and process coming soon!). The whole process is so easy and fun and the noodles are AMAZING! So, we come inside and wash our hands to get the process going. When we get to the stage where I need to fill the pot to boil the pasta, the water pressure is low. Now keep in mind, we just washed probably 20 minutes prior to this and the water pressure was just fine. Well, I immediately go around and check other water sources, all low pressure. So, I message my neighbor asking if they have any issues (I am still getting used to not living on base where everything is connected like that). When I come to the conclusion that nothing is going on specifically in the house and I haven’t left any hoses running, I head to the water shut off location. Well, sure enough…. water is BUBBLING out around where the shut off is and flooding all in the ditch area. I call the water company and get them working on coming out because yay we’ve got a leak! I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of the TDY curse, but something like this has happened every single time my husband has travelled for work. It doesn’t matter if it’s one week or months… something crazy wacky happens. You know what though? We’ve got this! I had to call my husband to locate the water shut off key. I told him I was not going to mention anything until I had it fixed but unfortunately needed help in locating the key. He, of course, wants to know all of this and felt terrible not being home to handle it. To top this all off, it was Friday at 1600 (4:00pm) which made me think it was going to be hours before someone was going to be able to come. As I was walking out there with a shovel and the water shut off key, the water company gentleman pulled up. They discovered the bottom of our meter blew out and the water was just pouring out which is why we saw the bubbling. They got to work on fixing that and we just prayed there was nothing going on on our side of the meter. There are so many ways I could have handled this, but we went with thanksgiving and brains because we are brave strong girls and we’ve GOT this!
That is honestly the only crazy crazy thing that happened while he was gone. We did find a leak in the chicken coop roof so during the insane weather one day, little love and I put a tarp on the chicken coop. We had such fun times even in our ‘projecting’ and I know that little love went to bed every day knowing she had a fun day and that she was deeply loved. We turned her horse into a unicorn, we ate breakfast in the pasture (where we learned one of the horses eats orange peels), we hung with our chickens, we didn’t let the cat eat the chickens (very important to note), we built a temporary fence for our goats, we fixed some crossed fencing in our horse fence, we played dolls and horses (everyone goes to the doctor and vet right now), we went bowling, we hung with new friends, we gardened, we projected (made a table!! Video on Instagram!)… the list goes on. So no… we didn’t survive… sure we had ‘hardship’ in that our main guy was gone… but we THRIVED.
I saw a quote the other day, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant” (Author: Robert Louis Stevenson). This is my new perspective. This is my thriving. My days, my life right now, is making the magic for my little one. What I may see as a hard day, or just trying to get by moments, could actually be her favorite moments of the day. I also saw a video of a mom recounting her day and listing off all of the hard things that happened to her. When the dad asked the little girl about her day, she said the same events of the day, but every moment that was hard for the mom was actually a magical moment for the child. This is my goal. My goal is to be thriving daily, not to just survive another day on the farm, in the kitchen, or being a parent. Even if it’s a day of rest, I want to thrive in that moment of rest. I read that rainy days are so gardeners can clean their house! How funny is that because we surely did clean house one of the rainy days! God calls us to rest, and when we don’t listen… he will make it happen. A rainy day is what caused us to rest over our time without dad being here. I didn’t realize it until it happened, but man did we need it! That’s how parenting happens, our little ones may not know what they need until we point it out to them. I’m taking notes from God here, do things for your littles, look out for them, be strong for them, have fun for them!
To thrive is to grow vigorously, to gain in wealth or possessions, and to progress to or realize a goal despite or because of circumstances (Thanks again Mr. Webster). What are you surviving through right now? Is there a way to change your perspective and see some thriving areas in there? I hope that you are able to find a way to discover the seeds you are planting, not only what you are harvesting. Let us know in the comments what’s on your heart! We would love to talk with you and we would most importantly, love to pray for you!
May his favor be upon you, may His face shine upon you!
Xxoo,
Beth
