The Remains of the Day

Many of you don't know my story..we have met during this past year and I have had a lot of prettiness in my blog since then.....But.....

Every Labor Day weekend, some remembrance of a Labor Day 19 yrs ago seems to reappear..  Here is a link to that story...anybody touched at all by divorce can identify with me..

DIVORCE is final

This is something I don't often write about but it is coming up on the 15 year mark when my divorce was final...It was the saddest season of my life next to my mama's death..  I am going to write a little about this experience without getting bogged down in the emotions of that time and then this will have been put down on paper for all to read..especially for those that have experienced it or know someone that has....so this part of my story if for you..you are not alone.... to read the rest....   Divorce is Final

As I look at my severely pruned hedge, I can remember my life during the time of my divorce.  I had been severely pruned..back to almost nothing...

But, I know that a better day will come and that this ugly looking hedge will one day be as beautiful as this one...because that is what happened in my own life....

 

So I count it all joy...

and wait...

because I have seen the faithfulness of my God  

and I will continue to see it..

Happy Labor Day Y'all

Thank you so very much for being my friends.

feel free to share this with anybody you know that it can help..

Love,

 Mona

Stone Walls and boundaries....

One of the things that caught my eye right away when we saw our house for the first time were the stone walls that are in our backyard..  Actually, I think I kinda said this is the house I want as soon as I saw them......You know, there are things in a landscape that only time can put there....No new construction can even duplicate something that has been there for decades...My one request to our realtor was that our house be 'a homeplace'.....I knew what I was looking for and that helped in eliminating house after house..  I could almost tell the minute we drove up in front of a house that it wasn't what I was looking for....we looked at a lot of houses....a LOT....much to our most patient realtors chagrin......but he stuck with us and we stayed true to our word...we WOULD buy through him..no matter what.....and we did...

Sometimes , I need a reminder of why I am doing something....of what I was drawn to in the beginning..what makes me keep going and remembering the little things that caused me to make a choice....and all of this helps me to persevere..even when life seems hard and mundane and complacency creeps in...

 I really do have a vision and it needs polishing up a bit....Seeing these great walls with different eyes yesterday reminded me.......Even when it seemed impossible...I mean really, really impossible....not even a chance....God came through for me....He gave to me my hearts desire....a HOMEPLACE.....complete with these little stone walls and a mature landscape..

.daffodils, camellias, oak trees, magnolias, hollies, tulip poplar, even a beloved deodar cedar...azaleas, peonies, many, many sasanquas, hyacinths, crocus, liriope, ajuga, iron cross, English dogwood(mock Orange), spirea, forsythia, mahonia, daylilies, snowbells, dogwoods, crepe myrtles and the list goes on and on...It is a delightful garden and a wonderful place to live...my dream did come true..and it all started with a stone wall.....

What is your hearts desire?  have you let it go or are you still hoping..even hoping against hope for it to come to pass?? 

I hung on...just barely....and it did come to pass...I now live on an old homeplace and it is our home.......

Hold on to your dreams....never, never, never give up......not ever.....

Hope no matter what

On this day, 18 years ago my husband of 21 years walked out on me....I spent the next few weeks doing everything I could to convince him that it was not the right thing to do...  I was not successful in my persuasive words..even though I had what I thought was the BEST argument...not to get a divorce was the supreme goal..

I still do not really know why he chose to divorce me anyway......

It was the darkest day of my life.....Nov 7, 1994......all of the life was sucked out of me and I didn't think I would survive.  without telling my story, you cannot know me....that I am the woman I am today because I went through this time in my life....it is my testimony.....and we overcome by the words of our testimony..so this is a small part of that season.....I think there are many people today feeling the same feelings that I felt on that day..when life threw me a curve ball

It is a sad story of what he did to me during the months that led up to the final divorce decree....I had no money and no job experience and I was over 40....my children were grown and leaving home.  I lived in a rented house and drove an old car....you get the picture....he had not cared about me at all...I asked him over and over not to divorce me...

and that is where I found myself on that life changing day 18 years ago.......

BUT GOD...............

I turned to Him, really turned to Him..no playing church would do....I was dependent on Him for everything and He came through over and over and over....and He transformed me into a strong and overcoming woman....
I regained my confidence...  I understood love and forgiveness and how to fight for something I believed in....even if the outcome was not what I wanted.....so that is where I find myself today...the election was not the outcome I expected or wanted......

BUT...you know what????     I am filled with HOPE because I have seen God take a less than desirable outcome and turn it in my favor before..and I know that is the kind of God I love...  He always takes care of His own....

Today I am happily married to a man that loves me and cares for me...we own a house with acreage..and my car is not old and broken....and  my confidence in who I am is not demeaned every day....

things can turn out a whole lot better than we think they can..sometimes we just have to walk through the fire to get to the place where life is better than before....I have walked through the fire and come out the other side.....

Today I am thankful for my experience of divorce because it caused me to take a long, hard look at who I really was and let the God I love transform me into who He designed me to be..

There is HOPE......no matter how dark it looks to you, there is a light that shines if we keep looking for it.......

Thank you for reading my words.I hope they have imparted hope to you...

Mona

Finding HOPE

Do you ever have a day when everything is going along good and then...WHAM...you find out something about somebody you love and they are not really doing well in their life and it causes you to scramble to try to find some hope somewhere...anywhere.....there has to be some hope...and I need to find it....

I have tried to deny it, to cause myself to be hopeful anyway..to look for the silver lining and all of the things we all do when we see someone we love suffering......frankly, lately my facebook page has been filled with people struggling.....cancer, parents deaths, older parents suffering, divorce, illness...and the list goes on and on...maybe it is our age bracket..or maybe it is a sign of the times..I don't know but it can take it's toll on hope.....because I really, really care about these people and what is happening to them and I am thankful for facebook and blogs...without them I would not know what is happening in a lot of people's lives.....I consider myself to be an optimist but after receiving news about my Daddy starting to really fail and becoming feeble and depressed..well, it made it really hard for me to hang onto hope anymore....I do not want any of these things to be happening to him...maybe It is just that I do not want him to be getting so old..he is 86 and has moved into assisted living a long way away from me.....so as I struggle with all of this, it was a HUGE thing when I found this among all of the old junk jewelry while cleaning out my sewing room.......

I got the message.....no matter what..hold onto HOPE...don't give up HOPE.......in a very unexpected place I found HOPE.....God is my ultimate hope and I need to hold on...tightly...

stretch....no matter how high.....do not let it go....keep HOPE alive..........

My all time favorite movie is Hope Floats......I have written about it here

“Beginnings are usually scary, endings are usually sad, but it's what's in the middle that counts. So when you find yourself at the beginning, just give hope a chance to float up. And it will.”

― Hope Floats

and we all need to stop and smell the roses so I will share some flowers from my yard....

Hope deferred makes the heart sick......

but desire fulfilled is a tree of life...

We have to keep hope alive in our hearts..

So that is what I am doing...watering the hope and hanging on for dear life...

thank you for stopping by today...HERE!!!  take some HOPE with you....

and I hope to see you again soon...

Mona

Promises and Hope

When I went into the garden this morning, I saw promises.....promises of good things to come......

this bright yellow flower is the promise of a squash...........

these green tomatoes are the promise of red ripe tomatoes in the very near future.....

the promise of a zinnia flower.....

and I hope it is the green and red ones I had last year....

the promise of cucumbers

the promise of a new daylily

a seed pod

I did the hybridizing

Promises bring HOPE......we need hope to live a healthy life..

Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

that is a scary thought..that without hope, we are not healthy...and we are living in a world that has a lot of hopelessness in it...a LOT..

As a gardener, I have trained myself to look for the little promises of things to come..the good things....a HOPE that keeps me going..keeps me pushing forward even when things are hard or don't seem to be working in my favor.....I look for something with promise..with hope...

sometimes something comes along and starts eating away at our promises......

then we have a choice

we can sit back and watch it erode our hope...

or

we can pick it off and sqush it under our feet

this little caterpillar is now history..he did a little damage, but not as much as he could have if I had left it alone....I took action and killed him before he could kill this plant...

no victim mentality here.

Hope is a very important thing to have..without it life seems purposeless....guard your heart where hope lives..

we get our hope from God...He is our hope...and our promises..

there is always something  that will make hope arise in our heart.. if we look for it and learn to recognize the little promises in our everyday life....

just like this morning, I spotted the squash bloom as soon as I opened the garden gate....and hope arose....the promise of yellow squash is real....all of these promises are...

don't let a caterpillar just eat up your plant...get him off and sqush him dead...it is your choice..

make a good one that keeps the hope in your heart alive...

thank you for stopping by today

I hope to see you again soon

Mona

Looking Skyward....

Lately, well, maybe all the time...........I am fascinated by the beauty of the sky.  I even painted my kitchen ceiling to resemble the sky and wrote about it in this post ......

This spring there has been exceptional beauty in our eastern sky..it is so easy to grab my camera and take pictures across our backyard.....there are few lights here so we don't have the light pollution of a city...and I am thankful for that...it truly is an amazing expanse of sky that we get to see each and every morning and evening..and all of the in betweens.....I can't even count the number of times one of us has said "come here"  look at that sky...
These pictures were all taken this week at different times of sunrise and sunset.....it is amazing to see.....

SKY...think about it.....large, huge, unending...beautiful...colorful....always changing...what hope we have when we look at the sky....when life stresses you out, look UP!!  and breathe..

and all of that activity in the sky causes the earth to bloom like crazy...on this March morning, these are my flowers that are blooming....

 Flowers and skies.... two of the things I am really, really thankful for today....what are you thankful for?

thank you for stopping by today..I hope to see you again soon......
until then, look around and see what you can see....there is beauty all around you.....if we only look for it....

                                                                         Mona

It can happen to YOU

During this week between Christmas and the New Year, there  is usually a lot of soul searching and rethinking and planning in very small doses...  :-)    Some people make resolutions, some people take inventory, some people think about what they want to do in the coming year.....but nevertheless, ALL of us will enter a brand new year in just a few days...

As we take stock of our lives.....  or not....  I encourage you (myself included)  to dream...dream BIG!!  try the impossible...let go of the fear of risk taking...begin to say to self...why NOT me????   life is not just for others...it is for ME!!  choose life...to embrace it and live it...  Let's see just what we can allow ourselves to do in this coming year...make it better than the last one.. go forward.......

these 2 little songs say a lot.....IT absolutely CAN happen to you.......

When you wish upon a star

Makes no difference who you are

Anything your heart desires

Will come to you

If your heart is in your dream

No request is too extreme

When you wish upon a star

As dreamers do

Fate is kind

She brings to those to love

The sweet fulfillment of

Their secret longing

Like a bolt out of the blue

Fate steps in and sees you through

When you wish upon a star

Your dreams come true

 Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you
If you’re young at heart
For it’s hard, you will find, to be narrow of
mind
If you’re young at heart

You can go to extremes with impossible schemes
You can laugh when your dreams fall apart at the
seams
And life gets more exciting with each passing
day
And love is either in your heart or on it’s way

Don’t you know that it’s worth every treasure on
earth
To be young at heart
For as rich as you are it’s much better by far
To be young at heart

And if you should survive to 105
Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive
Then here is the best part
You have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart

And if you should survive to 105
Look at all you’ll derive out of being alive
Then here is the best part
You have a head start
If you are among the very young at heart

thank you for stopping by this morning....let's live this life to the fullest.....

at the end, I don't want to leave anything undone 

Once I was Married, then I was NOT

I am now a happily married woman but it was not always so...I was in a marriage that ended in divorce after 22 years..It was a very difficult thing to go through.  it was so very different than a death because I could not have a funeral and walk away from the grave.  it is something that goes on and on....only the marriage died..not the people involved...and that is the dark truth about divorce..it does not die, but takes on a life of it's own..it continues for all of time...there is a tearing..a ripping that effects all those that come after it in the family line...some of the effects are good but a lot of them are heart wrenching.....divorce is NOT a good or a simple thing..not something that can be done for the good of both parties when there are children involved....it is a bad thing and something that needs to fall out of fashion..it has become way too easy to get a divorce and way too easy to think it is a good solution.....

but for all of you out there that have experienced this, I want to offer encouragement and hope....there is life after divorce...I am living proof that even when it is done to you and you fight with everything in you to prevent it, your life and mine can become a good thing once again...

thank you for reading along today...hope to see you again soon...

Coffee and tomato sandwiches..

What????  do these have to do with one another...ummmmm  nothing..really...they are just  two of the things that happened at our house this past week. 

If you have never tasted Community coffee, maybe I can persuade you to find some and give it a try.  I think you will be glad you did...we buy it by the 2 lb. bags and have it shipped from here ....I used to run around to all the grocery stores trying to find it and just decided this is the easiest way for us to always have some...We have been drinking this coffee most of our married life.  we used to go to a little Cajun restaurant..Gautreau's.... when we were dating and I loved, loved their coffee....they would make a fresh pot of cafe coffee for me and I would drink most of it after a dinner of blackened catfish..we would buy it there when they had it and bring it home to enjoy...oh, how we loved that little restaurant.  it is now gone but I have fond memories and we still drink the Community coffee...My husband introduced me to the Cajun flavors with this coffee being one of my favorite....he lived for a time in Mississippi right before I met him...it was the VERY WORST time of his life but the silver lining is this coffee and our being familiar with Cajun food...I have quite a collection of cookbooks that I have read over and over trying to learn to cook this wonderful food...and acquired a taste for all things Tobasco.  LOL.  anyway a very good thing came from a very bad thing in my husband's life...he came out of Mississippi with a taste for all things Cajun and a divorce....funny how life acts like that sometimes  all of the time....something good comes out of something so bad....

and all last week we were sick with an awful summer cold..too hot to be outside and mosquitoes the size of small dogs.......but one day, there was a RIPE tomato.....so we had these so, so good tomato sandwiches...all while we had stuffy noses and couldn't really taste it very good...LOL   but the tomatoes are beginning to ripen..Cherokee Purple is the first this year..an heirloom with a purple color and green seeds...when I tried to feed these to my Daddy several years ago, he could not eat them...said they made him sick to look at them cause they didn't look right..LOL  old people can be funny!!  believe me, they taste good......

so we have had our first tomato sandwich of the summer.

when I started writing this morning I was on a ramble, not knowing where I would end up but now, I think I do...

If you look closely in these gray skies, you will  see where the sky is beginning to turn blue.....in these clouds, there seems to be a silver lining...the rain is over and gone..the trees are so very green...the gray skies are turning to blue..and life is good....

no matter how awful life has been for me and you, there is ALWAYS something good that we can focus on.....Out of an awful, no good, terrible time in my husband's life that ended in divorce and all the rest that goes with it..........came our beloved Community coffee..the very thing that we wake up to every morning...a memory of good things coming out of the pits of life....and a love for all things Cajun....even if I am a true Georgia girl....maybe , just maybe I have a little Cajun blood in there somewhere.  :-)
when we think of planning the first real vacation we have ever had..to celebrate the end of paying child support...that we thought would never end.....but it did!!     my thoughts and heart turn to Cajun country...I want to go there and eat the food and drink the coffee there.and eat Boudin...and crawfish.in the real places..so we'll see what this next year holds for us..

I am so appreciative for your reading along today..and I hope you get some encouragement that no matter how discouraged and awful you feel today..there is something, somewhere in the midst of it all that will bring you encouragement...look for it.....search for it..and do not give up until you find it..it is like the grain of sand in that oyster that because it is an irritant, it gets attention from the oyster until it turns into a pearl..what is your pearl?

My pearl is Community coffee and tomato sandwiches.......

Expecting a harvest

It's funny how ideas pop into my mind as I am walking around my yard in the early morning...it is quiet and the phone and the fax machine have not yet started their daily business...

this morning I was laughing out loud as I found vegetables and flowers and blueberries.....such an abundance and I realized that I am continually SURPRISED that what I plant makes a harvest...I don't know why I have a hard time expecting and hoping for a good harvest when I plant something.  I started to think about this and I guess I have suffered through quite a bit of loss and rejection in my life and it has colored how I see things....so..wait a minute!!!!

I NEED to change some things..I need to renew my mind..I MUST get a grip and begin to believe the TRUTH...that when I plant something, I am to EXPECT a harvest...I will reap what I sow....my expectation level has been running on EMPTY!!!!!   time to fill the tank...it's time to see what really  IS!.. and when I plant a sunflower seed, I am not going to get a zucchini......if we plant good things, we reap good things...if we ask for a fish, we will not receive a snake.....God is in the business of giving good gifts to His daughters...

I am changing my glasses today to get a pair that sees the TRUTH..that looks at life with hope and faith that the outcome will be a good one......

Here is what I found this  morning in my garden...what a wonderful harvest awaits me each day....

the daylilies

heirloom gladiolus-- ATOM

sunflower showing color

beets, squash, cucumbers, zucchini

I am so glad you stopped by this morning...and walked around here with me....I hope your life is fruitful and that you are expecting good things in your life..you just may need a new pair of glasses too.. :-)

For the Beauty of the Earth

This morning has been an up and down morning...sometimes I wonder about me. :-)
I grabbed my camera and outside I went...the roses are blooming among lots of other flowers but this morning I was hunting the roses....I don't really see myself as a rosarian..I am a novice but I do love my roses and Bryan has given me many over the years from The Antique rose Emporium out of Texas...they are beautiful....it didn't take long before I was humming an old familiar song.....For The Beauty Of The Earth.

it took a while to find it on youtube but I finally found a good arrangement to share this morning..Enjoy the music while you see the roses I found today in my garden...

Cecile Brunner

Heritage

Iceberg

Cecile Brunner

double Knockout rose

madame isaac pereire

granny grimmetts

I hope you have enjoyed the roses....they reminded me to STOP and smell them..and the day seemed a little brighter.
thank you for reading along with me..

Remembering Mama

Mama

Today is my beautiful Mama's birthday..she would have been 81 years old.....but I will always remember her as a much younger woman because she died young....she had  just turned 73 years old when she was killed in a tragic car accident that instantly took her life and left my Daddy virtually unharmed except for a few bruises. He literally walked away from the fatal wreck. I will always believe that she was stolen away from this life before it was her time to go. she still had a lot of life to live and a lot of life to pass on to us.....It was because of an accident that she is no longer here.....I don't know if I will ever get over this loss...the pain is not as acute as it used to be but it is still grief, just not the gripping, cannot get away from it kind.......I can think about her without tears now.....there are good memories to focus on.. But I still miss her terribly sometimes...hardly a day goes by that I do not think of her and sometimes I really, really would like to talk things over with her just one more time..I could talk to her about anybody and she would keep it to herself and still love me. :-)

There is not much else like a mama's love... she and I had a rough and rocky relationship for years and years but had come to a place of real understanding and acceptance about 2 years before her death. I am most thankful for those 2 years, as they erased most of the pain of the decades before then.....and as silly as it sounds the Lord used a movie to speak to me, loudly.....to help me see that she was a woman just like me...and I was a woman just like her..... that bond can never be broken and her love for me and who she was will be passed on to my grandchildren...

Will and Mac often point to a picture of her and I tell them over and over who that is...my Mama.. I certainly see her showing up already in my grandsons....they love the dirt..the oldest one is a sure gardener in the making...she would be proud....there is already someone who will continue to grow daylilies.....I know she is smiling about that......

This is just one of the lilies she hybridized and now it grows in my yard....she had a good eye for this....it is one of my treasures....and will be passed along to future generations...it's just what we do..pass along flowers..LOL

Well, you have heard a little of my story involving my Mama....and if you have a mama or you are a mama, your job is very important....your mama is human just like you are.....even if you don't get along now, there is still hope..because how can a mama reject her own child?  it will not always be....I am so very thankful for the last 2 years of Mama's life..we made amends and when she died, I had NO REGRETS...that is a wonderful gift she left me....Peace about our relationship....so never give up...don't lose who you are but also never close the door completely..there might be a miracle around the next bend...there was for me....

So I remember the good things and do not dwell on the bad..I do wish she had lived longer but she didn't and I have come to have peace about that....

Here is a clip from that life changing movie for me....if you are having ANY trouble in your mama relationship, please watch this clip.....it will speak to you..and then watch the movie....it has lots of healing in the story.......




one of my favorite lines in the movie is  Daddy, did you get loved enough?
and he says my question to you is Did YOU get loved enough?

after it was all said and done.....I think I got loved enough.........