I am a mother who knows there is power in journaling.

For the past several weeks I have been going through all of my past journals, letters, and other writing.  My entries are not daily or even weekly, but there are many over the years.  I am finding things I had completely forgotten about.

Admittedly, I have been looking for the dark and negative pieces in order to gain clarification on my struggles with depression.  I have found plenty of black pearls, entries that show patterns, false beliefs, weaknesses, and heartaches.  From these I am able to see what I have changed and overcome, and what I still need to change.  I have made it for about 5 months now without a real dip into depression.  It has taunted me,  especially through some intense struggles in recent weeks, but I feel I am breaking new ground in understanding it, and that there is hope of casting it off forever.

Much to my joy, I have also found precious treasures of personal revelations, the tender mercies of God, and experiences and feelings that are evidence of goodness in my life.  It is a healing journey to see that in all my inconsistency and repeatedly making the same mistakes, I was consistently working at gaining wisdom, through study; I was consistently repenting and turning back to God - although many I times I had to be compelled to be humble; I was consistently trying to be a good mother, and slowly but surely gaining better skills, patience, and vision of what a good mother can be.

I have read things that I learned and loved, and have forgotten.  I feel a renewed hope in implementing these in my life.  My love of traditions that are meaningful, my love of the Constitution and liberty, my love of agency education - my love of writing!

I am a mother who knows how to grow sweet potatoes!

Last February I found an old sweet potato in the bottom drawer of my fridge.  I love sweet potatoes.  And of course, I love growing real food, so I decided to try sprouting it.  I had nearly given up on it, when about 2 months later we started to get a tiny bud near the top.  So I held on, with new faith.  The bud grew bigger and formed a leaf, and eventually a second bud appeared.  I was ecstatic.  By May we had two nice sized slips growing out of our sweet potato.  I broke one off and planted it in a pot, and planted the other in a pot with the potato still attached.  The one on its own did better, but they both grew.  By mid-June it was warm enough to plant them, and they slowly and steadily grew...  Fall came, life was hectic, and we did not harvest so much of what we had planted . We nearly forgot the sweet potatoes.  A couple days ago, yes, in December, Jonathan and I went out with a spade and here is what we dug up. We are so excited to eat them!

Gardening and Permaculture have taught me about patience, and miracles.  Mostly, they have taught me that the best outcomes in life we can't force.  We do our part - which is small, and God does the rest.