Obsessive Doubts

Yesterday my life was not like a box of chocolates, more like a sandwich.  A wrap up Mission Blitz meeting in the morning was followed by real estate persons in our home.  The day ended with a visit to the mission out-reach team meeting at church.  God stuff, self stuff, God stuff, like I said a sandwich.  Pajama time was about 8:30 and finally into bed about 11.

Three o' clock A.M. found me up for a bladder empty then back to bed.  Sleep was pushed aside by the thoughts of all that needed to be done to even begin to get the house and yard ready for showing.  Lying there next to a soundly sleeping Gene, my thoughts were first of why we had even moved to Missouri.  I know in 1975 I pushed for it as I saw my husband yearning for his Ozarks.  And now I know I am pushing for this move to Austin as I yearn to be near our son and grandsons.  Were either of these moves really what the Creator had in mind for our life journey I thought prayerfully?  My thoughts drifted back to tasks not expecting an immediate answer.  Answers to my questions to the Creator do not usually come quickly.  Sometimes it is days, weeks, seemingly never or worse yet an answer I do not want to accept.  

This morning as anyone prone to tension headaches might expect, I awoke with a tense neck and body.  Gene was up first and I begged him to make some of his good coffee.  As I lay in bed I looked out our bedroom window at the garden.

View from inside my bedroom into back yard.

There is the clematis in bloom.  The last clematis I would ever buy I told God.  Yes, one day I actually stood in the garden center coveting the clematis, visualizing it growing and covering the arbor.  I had planted so many clematis and other plants only to watch them languish and die.  I had tried to keep them alive.  I would move the plants to a different spot to see if they would be happier.  Several did in fact love their new home and flourished.  But never the clematis. 

I promised God that day in Lowe's garden center if it would grow I would never buy another.  And if it died I would accept the fact I was not to have clematis in my garden.  That was in 2006.  The arbor is still not covered by the clematis.  The clematis barely climbs beyond 2 to 3 feet each year but it has survived and never fails to bloom each spring.  There is a whispered answer on each petal

Yesterday the Realtor told us we had 3 strikes against selling the house quickly.  # 1, my beloved garden.  # 2 all the wallpaper.  # 3 all the stuff in the house.  I had watched enough HGTV to already know these things in my head.  But then in the middle of last night I started thinking about all that garden and stuff.  They are a part of my essence, our essence!  Our garden, our decorating style and our stuff, our life in this house for the last twenty plus years.  There are plants in the ground from friends.  There is a plant my son sent for Mother's day a few years back.  There are live Christmas trees from 3 different Christmases.  There had been two others but they died.  There are the daffodils and peonies from Edna's garden.

And inside our home is stuff.  My dear Lord is there stuff!   An old upright piano my older sister's learned to play, double barrel shot gun from my great grandfather, paintings done by my sister, two friends and a deceased sister in law.  There are probably 50 photo albums.  The RCA Victorla on which Gene remembers watching his grandfather play records for him.  A rocker with mismatched runners belonging to Gene's other grandfather and the list goes on including my Little Golden book collection from my Aunt Opal.  Stuff from generations of Rogers, Jones, Adcocks and Harness line our walls, shelves and table tops.  An attic with Star Wars, Rescue!, baby bed and other items used for and by our son.  There is a trunk with posters from his teen years.  Oh, my, all the stuff.

But this life is not about the past I keep reminding myself.  It is about the now and the hopes of the future.  The future in the eyes of grandsons, nieces, nephews and their children.  So after breakfast I began the task of just putting away items used in last Saturday's party.  Gene began going through the eternal pile of papers on his roll top desk.  The desk I bought for him with the first bonus for individual outstanding work I received from Litton.  I continued gathering, organizing and straightening just to have a starting place for the sorting, removing, giving away and selling.  My emotions were running high.  A call to a friend who loves canning to ask if she would like to have Gene's mom's canning jars found me in sobs.  I will keep one jar I decided.  Just one.

I stopped to spend some time reading the daily devotional at The Upper Room.  And there was that same Creator that let the clematis bloom this morning.  Answering my 3 A. M. prayer.  Reminding me that disciples leave behind boats, careers and everything to follow the call.  A call with a different purpose.

"But “the one who calls you is faithful” and will give us the grace we need to change (1 Thess. 5:24)."

My obsession has been my home, my garden.  Now it is time to move to the next obsession whatever it may be.  If you would like to see what others obsess about, pop on over the Gretchen's at Second Blooming and give yourself a treat!

Some of my obsession just coming to life this spring.