I just realized it tonight. As I was sitting out on the porch preparing the arugula. I am reconnecting to a place that I’d lost. A place where life is simpler. Not less busy, but there is just something going on. I have been questioning how I am going to simplify my life, and I think I’ve found the key.
But it’s so strange. In adding more work into my life by tending a garden and preparing food, I am somehow simplifying my life? How can that be?
It’s kind of like in the Bible when God tells us to do things that go against what seems to be sensible. But He’s right. What He says actually works out really well when we listen.
And that’s precisely how I know I’ve caught on to something. Even though it’s still not making a lot of sense.
But picture this. It’s the end of a hot day and I am sitting on a screen porch as the air is cooling, taking each arugula stem and cutting off the edible leaves. It’s meditative, my mind wanders as my fingers repeat. Snip, snip, snip. It’s like I’ve gone back in time, a farmer’s wife on the front porch, preparing the greens for dinner.
I used to do this preparation at the sink. Until yesterday. Yesterday I was hot and tired and needed to rest. So I decided to move the whole operation to the porch. And that’s when this aha moment began, really, because it made me want to sit on the porch again tonight to prepare today’s harvest.
I’ve never been one to regularly say grace, even though I’m a Christian. I’m not sure why not, maybe it just seemed artificial because I didn’t grow up doing it. (I know, that sounds really bad, doesn’t it? Please don’t tell anyone.) However, now as I am growing my own food I find myself thanking God all the time for it! It overwhelms me that I can plant these little tiny seeds and get such bounty. And when I say bounty, I mean bounty! Enough to eat each day plus enough to preserve and share with others. And it also overwhelms me that I am able to eat such pure food. God’s creation, straight from my land to my table.
Something is happening. And it’s really, really good.