One of my greatest joys is decorating my home on the inside to match the change of the seasons on the outside. Yesterday, I had the joy of taking down summer by putting away the glass baskets and blue mason jars filled with silk flowers and putting up fall by displaying pumpkins and scarecrows.  This season reminds me of my mother, Nancy.  

My mother was born October 27, 1942 and her father, my grandpa, came to the hospital with a carved pumpkin as a gift of celebration instead of flowers.  Every year after that, he gave my mother a carved pumpkin for her birthday.  He even did this when my mother attended college at Bethel making the trek from Rhinelander, WI to St. Paul, MN with a carved pumpkin in tow.  When my parents married, my grandpa handed this tradition off to my dad and told him that it was his job to carve a pumpkin each year for my mother’s birthday and he did this faithfully year in and year out often growing pumpkins in the garden for her.

The summer of 2007 was a difficult summer because my mother’s cancer returned in full force. My dad did not have the heart to plant a garden and so no pumpkins.  However, my dad’s perennial wildflower garden which was graced with daisies, Indian paintbrush, and buttercups came up beautifully.  One of the simple joys of that summer was sitting with my mother looking out the window at the flowers.  Wildflowers were her favorites. Most days my dad would come in with a small bouquet of picked flowers from the garden to display next to her bed.  One day, my mother was looking out the window and called me to her.  She pointed out a green pumpkin growing in the middle of the flowers.  It was a volunteer pumpkin meaning dropped there by a bird, most likely.  On top of the simple joy of looking at the wildflowers, she had the joy of watching this single pumpkin grow.  By mid-August the pumpkin was huge, but still green.  My mother died on August 18 and on the morning of the 19th, I looked out that back window and there was that pumpkin, in all it’s glory.  It had literally turned bright orange overnight.  I told my dad to come and look, and he decided that he would carve her a pumpkin one last time.  The day before her funeral, he carved it out and filled with wild flowers from the garden.  My mother always said that the Lord was in the smallest details of life and this was one of those sweet times of provision from the Lord.

You may wonder why I told this story today.  Well yesterday, as I sat down observing my home all decorated for fall, I felt the pangs of sadness and grief.  Because my mother’s birthday was at the end of October, my dad and many friends gave her beautiful fall decorations; glass pumpkins, cute scarecrows, fall themed artwork, and linens.  My mother truly had the most beautiful fall decorations of anyone I knew.  A few years after she died, my sister and I split up her seasonal collections and her fall decorations were, by far, our favorite.  So, with the joy of decorating our homes for fall comes sadness and weeping.

We have been going bit by bit through Romans 12:9-21 which really is an outline for healthy family living both in our own immediate families as well as in the extended body of Christ. Today we come to Romans 12:15 which says to “rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” In Christ, we want to have the ability to empathize with one another being joyful with those that are joyful and sad with those that are sad.  So today, would you join me in my joy of decorating for fall, but also join me in my sadness of missing my dear mother? How can I do the same for you? By the way, remembering dates of birth and death by sending a card, a text, or by calling is one the most profound and sweetest ways to be a doer of the word and ‘weeping with those who weep.’

Blessings to you,

Heather

When You Pray…

Each day: 

1. Pray for yourself.
2. Pray for you spouse.
3. Pray for your children.

Weekly:

Sunday – Government

Monday – Immediate Family

Tuesday – Your Church 

Wednesday – Your Extended Family

Thursday – Your Spouse’s Extended Family

Friday – Your Friends

Saturday – Variety

Feel free to go back and review in more detail the weekly prayer points.