I Believe

It was a dreadful day.  One of the worst in my memory.  This is the kind of story that happens in other neighborhoods.  To other people.  Not people we know and care about.

At the end of the day one family’s darling lay dead and the favorite neighborhood babysitter  was taken away.  How could this happen?  There must be some mistake.

Two families were devastated.  They lived on the same street.  They were the best of friends. Their lives would never be the same.  We shared their pain, though their pain was unimaginable.  We ached to make things better, but there was no better.

Some days later, I found myself puzzling over the flat of petunias on my doorstep.  I had bought them, but why?  Petunias are not my favorite flower.  They’re fine in other people’s yards, but I never choose them for mine.

At the nursery those very petunias had seduced me with their charm.  They had smiled at me hopefully.  “Take me home,” they said, and I obeyed.

Standing on my doorstep, I shook my head at the innocent looking petunias and wondered, “What are you doing here?”  They smiled seductively but remained silent.

What was I thinking?”   I tried to clear my head.  “I don’t even like petunias.”

At that moment I heard a quiet voice in my head, “It’s all right.  Those petunias are not for you.”

“Not for me? Then who are they for?”

“Someone who’s in pain,” came the answer.

Moments later, my children and I put the petunias in our red wagon and walked to our neighbors homes one at a time.  We did the planting.  Half the flowers were planting in one neighbor’s yard and half in another. 

Neither of those families lives in our neighborhood anymore, but I thought of them today when I saw someone buying petunias.  I wonder how they are.  I wonder about their broken hearts.

I am not capable of healing hearts, but I know someone who is.  I hope that they have reached out to Him in faith. 

“My Grace is Sufficient“ He said.   I believe.

Linda Garner

 

The Yolk's on Me

We love our ducks.  We enjoy their noisy chatter, and it's fun to watch them waddling around the yard, but most of all we love their eggs.

We call our ducks the Spice Girls.  The chocolate brown one is Cocoa.  The black one is Pepper.  The third has a reddish brown feather wrap around her middle, so we call her Cinnamon.

The Spice Girls are runner ducks.  They don't fly unless they are startled and then they flap their wings like crazy and take bumpy flights a few ungraceful feet in the air. They are inseparable and stick together like glue. 

They skitter around the yard together and are are very social with their sisters who live next door.  I sometimes find the girls gossiping together through the fence.  I would love to know what they are saying to each other.  Perhaps they're trading recipes.

They gobble up their turkey food, and also forage in the yard .We protect our garden from them, and feed them table scraps like cucumber peels and watermelon rinds. They usually run from us, unless we're packing watermelon.

I don't think the Spice Girls like us taking their eggs.  They glare at us when we gather them. They do their best to hide them. We don't have a daddy duck, so their are no babies on the way.  I wonder if they know this. 

Sometimes we cannot find the eggs.  Often we find one or two, but seldom three.  We wonder who the slacker is.  This can go on for days, and then we find a secret nest laden with eggs.  It's like finding buried treasure.  It happens that our treasure is not gold but green, because unlike the goose who laid golden eggs, runner ducks lay green eggs.  I suppose that Doctor Suess knew this.

The hidden eggs are fine in the cool of winter and even early spring, but what will we do when the weather warms up.  We can't have our lovely eggs spoiling under the summer sun. 

The Spice Girls like to bathe in their drinking water, stroll through our sprinklers, and dance in the rain.  We built them a shelter, but they'd rather be outdoors. 

Those green egg shells are hard.  Yesterday when I was making breakfast I couldn't get the shell to crack.  When it finally cracked, the egg spilled out and...the yolk was on me. 

That quacks me up.

Linda Garner