Count Your Many Blessings

You know you can be happily going along and just getting on with life then something comes along and bowls you over?

It could be in a good way or a bad way...
It could be something huge or just the last straw that breaks the camels back..

Some of you will know if you have been reading my blog over the years that Hubby has a Mental Illness of Chronic Depression. It is in control with medication and we both watch out for signs for when all is not going too well.

I have been working outside the last month each Saturday morning tidying what I can around the place as it as getting quite overgrown and messy and generally in need of care-taking. I've weeded and pruned our driveway garden; trimmed back and weeded the small native garden; pruned some of the fruit trees and now just finished the flower garden outside our dining room window. It involved pruning some rose bushes and digging out a huge clump of bulbs that should have been thinned a few years ago.

I now want to reclaim the vegetable garden and get some winter crops in before it gets cold but it looks like a wilderness of weeds and parsnips gone to seed. They self seeded from last years neglect but it's really only me who likes them so I never got to eat them all.
Harry has been helping a little pulling out the parsnips. I have found in the past that I get a blister type rash if I get any sap from the sprouted parsnip on my skin and it leaves a scar so I am reluctant to attack them myself.

Before I start the new plot in our vegetable patch rotation we really need to reposition the huge chook run on a new part so they hens can work on a new patch of ground and I can start a garden next to them. This will allow Hubby to start planting potatoes in the bit the hens are currently in early next spring.

All sounds easy enough... but unfortunately things are not quite happening and Hubby is spending a lot of time just sleeping. He says he is tired.... but I am watching... the job of a caregiver.

But this Saturday that "something" hit me and I felt really sorry for myself. There is a list of things to be done and I can't do them all on my own. I know widows and others living on their own have to do it themselves or find help some other way and all that, but the 'woe is me' kicked in.

I have learnt when this happens to let all the 'stuff' go and find something to minister and care for me. I have learnt to find the blessings, for there are many and so I wondered around the gardens that I have tidied up and admired the work I have done. It is early Autumn and the warmer days are fading - the flowers not quite so prolific, so I gathered myself a bunch. They may be a mixture of weeds and end of the season blooms but gathered up they made a bright arrangement on our table.

As I pass them now I am reminded that it is just one of the simple ways to boost how I feel and hum the little song we used to sing in church...

I am grateful for so much and know that in time everything will get done that needs to be done. It may end up not happening the way I think or would like but in the meantime I can be grateful for some much; good health, a great spouse, an awesome church family, a good paying job, a roof over my head, food on the table, great family, and an awesome God who always reminds me that He loves me!! And I don't have to be perfect or do things better to get His love!!