Round Two (or Three).

Themes seem to recur in my life.
Maybe I haven't learned their lessons yet so the Lord keeps bringing them around?

After you have a baby the doctors tell you to "take it easy for a while."
That's a pretty ambiguous phrase. How long is a while? Isn't "Easy" kind of a relative term?
What exactly do they mean by "strenuous housework?"
Really, it was all very curious to me.
So basically for the first couple of weeks I just did nothing but stare at my baby, and I mean, when she looks like this, how do you blame me?

Doing our morning devotions.

I hope she always sleeps like this.

But after a few weeks of staring at the baby and luxuriating on the sofa, you do start wondering what the balance is between soaking this baby stage in and realizing that life just keeps on going...and I have to go with it.
How is a new mom to proceed with life?!? The prescribed six weeks of rest was getting a little long, I felt. I mean, even to ME six weeks is a little excessive.
Eventually, I just had to get off the couch.



Now what?

Friends and family and church members had been so generous and sweet as to supply us with meals, so I didn't need to cook yet. I had scrubbed my baseboards and floors at least three times in the week or two prior to delivery, so they were still looking pretty good. I wasn't supposed to exercise yet, so that wouldn't be getting me moving. Hubbs always mows the yard, so I didn't need to do that. I wasn't supposed to lift heavy bags of rock or soil to get my container garden planted, so that was out of the question. I am afraid of dogs, so I didn't want to walk my new baby around in suburbia (aka "We have pets, not children" land). I am new to town, so I didn't have any best friends I could just drop in on. We don't own this house, so I couldn't paint anything or rip anything out. We only really have a front yard, so I didn't even feel comfortable just going outside and sitting.
Yikes.
"Ah!" I thought. "I will go pull weeds in the landscaping!" But then I remembered that this is a rental and the land lord has chosen the easy-to-maintain "rock garden" for this property.
So there were no weeds.

Blast it all.

And for the first time in my life I didn't really have anything I could do. Nothing needed to be done.
And that will make anyone feel pretty melancholy.

Typically in my life early June had been a bustling time! Planting gardens, weeding flower beds, harvesting early crops, cleaning and painting and priming and getting everything all ready for summer, being outside all the time to enjoy the warmth! You have to do it now or it doesn't get done! And even when I hadn't owned my own house and didn't have those types of things to do I was either moving and unpacking and setting up shop (like last year), or making all kinds of weddings happen (as in previous years), or packing up to head to the Pacific Northwest or the Middle East or wherever.
None of that was to be done this year.

So I sat back down on the couch and I felt what a lack of Dominion feels like. I have talked about this before, and it truly is something the Lord has impressed greatly upon my life.
 By not tending, by not stewarding, I really started to understand that work is a gift from the Lord. We are creatures who need something to do.

Now, all these revelations being said, that still didn't stop me from being in a bit of a malaise. I KNEW beyond any doubt that that is what we are called to do as humans and without it we wither.
And I felt like I was withering. And I started to go into a pity party that I didn't live in the country so I couldn't walk freely, without having to fear neighbors' dogs. And I was becoming unthankful for our cute little rental cottage because it didn't have any weeds for me to pull and I couldn't dig up the ground to just plant a regular garden. I started doubting whether I knew how to cook anymore and doubting whether I would ever be able to run errands with a baby.
Blah.
It was a total case of the Blahs.

And just when I thought these feelings would last forever, these showed up.

*Sigh*

You will remember of course my longstanding relationship with berries.
Read about Round One and Round Two here.

And just like that. Out of nowhere.
God had planted in my yard, all those years ago before I moved here, a mulberry tree.
To blossom and fruit precisely three weeks after my first baby was born.
To be here right in the middle of my pity party.
Right in the middle of my pining for the country.
Right in the middle of my struggle that I had nothing to do and nothing to cultivate and no ground to till.
Right when I was thinking I didn't know anything about making and growing food anymore.
Right in the middle of suburbia.
And right in my own backyard.
Just feet outside my door.
Right next to those weedless rock gardens.

God provided berries for me. Again.
Because he is good like that.