No matter where we lived,
no matter the climate
or how short the growing season,
no matter how many rocks,
big or small,
my grandmother worked the soil
and created beauty in its place.
She shouldn't have done it,
such a vast amount of energy expended
at her advanced age.
She shouldn't have been
able to do it,
struggling with rheumatoid arthritis
for forty-five years.
She did not walk;
she hobbled.
When we even insinuated
for her to sit down,
she would give us a look that
would cause an army to surrender.
This pioneer-strong woman did not wake up
moaning and a-groaning every morning
with arthritic knees and stiff hands,
saying, "O my LORD,
how am I going to face today?"
But she welcomed each dawn
with a prayer and an attitude,
"Ok, LORD,
what do we conquer today?"
She followed Him
into His day for her.
She didn't see big rocks blocking her way,
or even the need to maneuver around them,
or pretend they weren't there,
but she embraced her difficulties as they came
and let Him redeem them.
They weren't a hazard to her,
nor a hardship,
nor a "Woe is me!"
but instead,
"Wow, what can I do with that?"
She knew that her strength was too limited
and challenges too overwhelming
to carry along a burden of anxious thoughts
or the chains of despair,
those things that siphon one's strength
and stifle the very breath out of creativity.
She saw the big rocks of life with different eyes,
because she
knew what God can do.
She also knew as she hobbled along
that everyone struggles with something,
hers just a little more obvious than others.
The difference is
what you let God do with it.
Create beauty.
Let God redeem the hard stuff.
Ah Lord GOD!
It is You
who made the heavens and the earth
by Your great power
and by Your outstretched arm!
Nothing is too hard for You...
Jeremiah 32.17
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