When God asks you to practice your lessons. . .

What is crazy to me is how often God “teaches’ me something and then allows me to put that lesson into practice. Ha. Allows. More like hits me with a wrecking ball and says, “Try it now!” Oof. Today was one of those days. My emotions were frazzled and then God placed the little bird on my hammock stand and reminded me that I am more important than the bird. God reminded me just how much he had given me. I was so very thankful for this reminder and ready to face the world. What I didn’t know was what the world was about to bring my way.

I loaded up my kids and headed to my part-time job working as a cook and farm store worker. In addition to this work, I was still being a mother and keeping one eye on my kids. This job was very enjoyable for me, but adding my kids to the mix made it extremely stressful.

I had just finished cleaning up my kitchen mess and was about to rush home to get my flowers and things for the farmer’s market, when my boss lost control of a cart piled high with glass jars in boxes. She was absolutely mortified. I looked at my watch, saw her face and remembered that God had given me time and I could volunteer it to help her. She just knew that every jar was broken. I actually told her to go calm down from the panic attack I could see coming and said I would take care of clean up.

My co-worker and I gently picked up boxes and checked jars. One after another the boxes kept coming up with sealed jars. We got to the last box with an obvious mess and started cautiously picking it up. To our utter amazement, only one jar had broken. When our boss came back and we told her the good news she couldn’t believe it. I could, “Look how God took care of you,” I said as I made a mad dash back home because now, I was going to be late.

I opened our gate and pulled up to our house, leaving the children to sit inside while I grabbed everything to leave. After stuffing some things in the trunk, I heard my dogs barking and saw them running toward the open gate. Across the busy road, a lady had pulled her car off to the side and was starting to walk across the street to me. Thankfully, the dogs stopped and I was able to catch them and put them back inside.

Then I walked over to the lady, noticing the gas can in her hand. She asked for money to walk to the gas station and fill up her tank. I asked her to wait a minute and ran back into my house remembering that I needed my money pouch for market, but also knowing I had no extra money to give her. As I came to that realization, I remembered the half-filled gas can in the garage. I did not have money to give her, but I had a small can of gas that filled her car up enough to make it to the next gas station. Again, God said, “See you have time and materials.”

Now, I was going to barely make it to market before it opened. We hauled everything over to our spot and rapidly got the booth set up with the flower’s displayed. I was able to stop and take a quick breather and set up a little play/rest area for my kids to sit at while we worked the booth.

As I finished that, we noticed some friends of ours walking up to our booth. It soon became obvious that the lady was most rather tipsy. She came around the booth and sat down on our mat. I felt compelled to sit by her and she started pouring out her heart story. Literally, the story of her bad heart and the awful news she had found out that day. She got up to leave and I hugged her and asked if I could pray for her. Next thing I knew, I am standing in my flower booth with a sobbing woman and praying for her. That night, we sold out. Every last one of the cut flower bouquets went home with someone that needed that beauty in their world. God said, “See, you have time, you have materials and you have love. And I have you.”