New Adventures

  I've been setting off on a new adventure lately.  I don't know where, or how far it will take me, but I have become fascinated with the world of herbs and wild foods.  I am amazed by the vast variety of plants and herbs that God has given us to use for our health and survival!  Most of us know that peppermint can sooth an upset stomach, but did you know that the Latin name for Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale, means "disorder remedy used in the workshop" and the plant has properties that can treat a wide range of ailments from intestinal gas and poor digestion to arthritis and even acne?   There are a host of other wild "weeds" that can be made into treatments for all sorts of troubles.  Others are good for eating, either as a part of a meal, or as seasonings to enhance a more "traditional" meal.
  Learning about and collecting these wild treasures has become my latest hobby.  It gives me a real sense of accomplishment, knowing that I can take things from the world around me and use them to provide for my family and help to keep them healthy.   Now if I could just get them to try my food experiments!

Waiting

  Waiting.  We wait for a lot of things in life.  From the first day I can remember, I've been waiting for something.  I waited for my first lose tooth, I waited FOREVER for that tooth to get lose enough to pull out.  I waited for Christmas, and birthdays, I waited for the day I was finally old enough to wear nail polish and makeup!  I've waited for a lot of things in life.  There are a lot of things I'm still waiting for.  Some things are just little things, that make very little difference in the grand scheme of things.  I wait for the mail to come, the light to turn green, my turn in the grocery store check out line, and yes, I still wait for Christmas. (There are precisely  112 days until Christmas!)  Some things are big, really big.  Like waiting for that one special someone to come and sweep me off my feet and make me his forever.  It's the really big things that are the hardest to wait for, especially if they don't have a specific date attached.  You can't count down the days if you don't know when it's happening.
   For me, waiting is hard.  Really hard.  I'm not particularly impatient, I just don't like to wait, and it's even worse if I don't know when the thing I'm waiting for will happen.   I like to have everything all planned out, well in advance, with all the details in place long before I need them.   That's what makes waiting for the big things in life particularly difficult for me, they happen in God's way and with His timing, and that doesn't always match up with my ideas very well.  In fact, it's often VERY different.
  When I was 13, I had my life pretty much all planned out!  I knew who I would marry, when and where we would marry, where we would live, how many children we would have, and the list goes on!   Needless to say, life didn't happen according to my plan, and, looking back now, I'm very glad it didn't.  God's ways are so incredibly superior to my plans!   I would like to have married when I was 21, like I planned, but I would have missed out on so many incredible blessing along the way!  
   I still don't like waiting, but I am learning to trust, to lean on Jesus when I can't see my way and trust Him for each step, one step and a time and only the next step.  Because, really, the next step is all we really need to know.