Happy Halloween

Look at our real live jack-o-lantern.

Beauty on the Plaines

I find it very easy to be thankful when I walk in this beauty. 

Food and abundance.

I have not been blogging a lot lately. Don’t worry there has not been a big crises or big news to announce. I have just been busy. Very busy dealing with food.

Yes food. It is harvest time on Cananda’s prairie. Between our backyard garden, the produce from our CSA and my very generous friend's acreage. I have been over run. I am canning, freezing, and backing up a storm. It has become my new obsession. This week I have put up 12 jars of pickles, and 14 jars of tomatoes. I have got the crab-apples juiced and ready to make into jelly. The zucchini is still coming so I am now shredding it and freezing it to use in the winter. I am just our of time and recipes. That was just this week.

I have been back to the store to buy more canning jars four times and I am out again!

Yes I love it, and yes I am very excited to have good, local, healthy food put away for my family this winter but I am getting tired. I feel like it has become my full time job. My kitchen is nuts and I am running out of room for all these jars!

I have caught myself complaining about it all. My feet hurt at the end of the day and I was crazy frustrated when I had to throw out a whole box of cucumbers that I could not process before they when bad. Seriously, I am complaining that I have too much food, a great deal of it free. Hold The Phone?! This is crazy. I want all this food, I love it. I even prayed for a bountiful harvest. And now I am complaining.

You know, I have felt this same feeling before. There have been times where I am overwhelmed by things, or people that I love, by the abundance of what I have been given. And is that is the way God works. He give so much it blows us over. And if I do accept what God has to give me I love it but it will without question change my life and challenge me in new ways. And sometimes His abundance is so big that I don’t feel like I can handle it. It is too much. I am too small. I can’t take it all. (That is too much zucchini!)

But if I do say yes, I let His gifts come even if I can’t figure out what to do with it all, I am always better off. I have what I need in the “winter” moments.

But if my fear takes over it is ok.  Unlike my cucumbers God’s gifts don’t go bad. And if I can’t say yes today, He will offer it again.