Abundance, Hope, Love, Surrender
You know why I believe in abundance?
Plums.
My Katie called a month of Saturdays ago and said, “It’s time.”
I have witnessed first-hand Katie’s 6’5” husband, Rick, standing on a ladder (making him almost ten feet tall) shaking that plum tree until it’s buck naked.
(Butt naked? This is a running debate at my house…)
In any case, Katie and the twinners, Emma and Caleb, and Riley, the incessantly barking dog, take cover because those plums rain down on us like purple hail, and we scurry to pick them up and put them in buckets.
And buckets, and buckets, and buckets.
That tree and all of the resulting jam, syrup, ice cream, sauce, and whatever else we can think of to do with it… came from one plum… one.
Think of it.
And it’s not like we’ve blown our wad in only one season. Rick manhandles that tree every year, and every year the kids and Katie and I dodge the plum-bombs’ shock and awe, year after year after year, and it’s back to the kitchen with all of us pitting and smashing and blending and simmering and filling jars and water bathing until our fingers are purple and we’ve exhausted every recipe Pinterest has ever posted for plums.
It can wear people plumb out.
Abundance requires work, y’all. Sunup to sundown work. Work that leaves you loopy and in love with the neat, uniformed rows of jars in your pantry. Work that affords you the ability to be a blessing to many, many people who have yet to marinate a pork roast in a plum chutney that is nothing short of meat candy. That on a plate with some garlic mashed potatoes and green beans (both of which have been harvested from your garden) will make you want to slap your mama.
Maybe humankind created lack out of sheer laziness because, I’m not kidding you, that’s how much work it requires to live in abundance. And that lack begat greed and greed begat a whole lot of trouble for the world.
But when I’m sitting on my porch trying to yank the pit out of my 93744839020399485747336th plum, I know that God never intended for lack to occur. Think of wheat. Think of chickens laying eggs. Think of raindrops. Think of fields full of daisies.
Think about SPERM!
Think of all the possibilities… the boundless blessings designed for us by a generous God… and I swear to that generous God that I will drop kick you through the goal posts of life if you sit there and twist this into some 1980’s-televangelist-prosperity malarkey.
It’s not that.
My cup is runething over in so many impossible ways, beyond anything I could ever hope or imagine. Abundance is promise and provision and what should have been all along. It’s not ever having to worry — unless you remember how we human geniuses have created scarcity. It’s having your hands open to receive and open to let grace and mercy and hope and healing flow out from us. Giving it all away because love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and seeds and wheat and eggs and raindrops and sperm… are everywhere.
And letting it all flow out of you is called…
Surrender.
I’m still figuring all this out… abundance… surrender… what they are and how I’m supposed to live them out.
But one thing I know for sure is how amazing a good plum chutney is over a pork roast.
Daisy Rain Martin is an author, speaker, advocate, and educator as well as a founding member of The Flying M-Inklings Writing Group. She lives with her husband, Sean-Martin, in the beautiful state of Idaho and teaches English and Literature during the school year to the best 7th graders the world over. Daisy spends her summers writing, speaking, researching, creating, gardening, and canning.
Hope Givers: Hope is Here, is the sequel, of sorts, to her comedic, spiritual memoir, Juxtaposed: Finding Sanctuary on the Outside, which was her publisher's (Christopher Matthews) #1 top selling book in 2012. She has also written a free e-book for anyone who has or is currently being sexually abused called, If It’s Happened to You, which appears in its entirety in Hope Givers. Please follow her weekly blog, SATURDAISIES, which addresses a plethora of current issues including child advocacy, all things hilarious, and matters of the heart. She would love for you to join the Rainy Dais Community by friending her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
No comments:
Post a Comment