Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Savoring The Good




Lately, everything has felt like a long slog. We wake up to frost and occasional snow instead of warming spring days. My hands long to be covered in earth while I can still get out into the yard and do the work, but I fear any veggies and flowers that I plant will be destroyed by the unnaturally lingering chill. 

It is difficult to gauge where we are this year.  Alas, that is true on far too many fronts at once for me lately.

With some recent good news -- I'm not a carrier of the genetic mutation for breast cancer, which means that The Peanut is not likely one, either (whew!) -- we can move forward with treatment.  It took forever to get those test results back, and now I just need us to DO something.

Anything.

In the meantime, though, I need to find a way to live and dance and shout and sing.  It should be intuitive, but I find myself forgetting to enjoy the life I have while trying so hard to save it, but that's just where things are for me at the moment.

Instead of holding my breath and researching more information about breast cancer, though, I'd rather be out strolling in the sunshine with The Peanut.  Or planting some new life in the yard while I can still get out to do so, even if that does mean a chance that it will get singed by another frost.

You can't run from danger when it is all around you, but you can defiantly plunge forward anyway, right?


To that end, we're going to do a little garden prep today.  I'm feeling the need to set out some onions, broccoli, radishes, chard, snap peas and lettuce while I still can -- if nothing else, we'll get some fresh early veggies out of the garden this year.  And if I can manage it mid-May, maybe some tomatoes in the ground as well as herbs.

Gardening has always been a stress reliever for me.  Something about bringing new life, new green, into the world that surrounds me and nurturing our garden so that it can, in turn, nurture us -- it calls to me every spring. 

As I look out the sunroom windows, the rose bushes are beginning to send out leaf buds, and the daylillies are sprouting quickly.  In a few weeks, our yard will be awash in color and scent from prior years' plantings.  You can feel that yearning for sunlight and warmth from the waiting earth, if only the weather would cooperate and push the Spring forward a notch or two, we'd have dogwood blooms aplenty.

There is so much to be thankful for in my life, especially my wonderful family.  They have been keeping me afloat in very rough seas of late and they mean the world to me. 

One thing I've learned the last few weeks:  it can be such a blessing to clearly see your life in stark contrasts, where you have been, where you still want to go, what you want to change and, most importantly, what you love the most.  That is the part that I'm savoring most of all right now.

They say there is no reward without a risk.  This is a risk that I would never have chosen on my own, but there is no sense in wasting the opportunity to learn from it anyway, right?  Savor the good, every single day.

(YouTube -- Florence+The Machine, singing Shake It Out.  Love this.)

2 comments:

Lindy said...

Thinking good thoughts for you and your family. Hugs and stuff.
Lindy and George

Christy Hardin Smith said...

Thanks mucho! We were just talking about how much we could use a little New Orleans right now. So much so that there may be some red beans and rice in our near future, thanks to the ease of making the beans in my crockpot. But, alas, the actual travel will have to wait a bit. SIGH. Hugs to y'all, though - hope all is well.