Garden Lullaby

Anticipation & Preparation

Sierra V. FedorkoLeave a comment

Garden Lullaby, May 22, 2018

I walked outside to my porch garden this morning to see a geranium beginning to bloom.I love it! LOOK how pretty it is as the gentle life is daring to see the light of day!

There is a snapdragon in the same flower pot as the geranium, but the snapdragon is (still) waiting to bloom. But you know something? In my eyes, the geranium has never taken beauty away from the snapdragon. The waiting and preparation wrapped in green buds has been its own kind of beauty, and I admire it!

I treasure the geranium as it blooms, and I anticipate the snapdragon for what it will be and I value the snapdragon as it undergoes the preparation process. AND I DON’T CARE HOW LONG IT TAKES! I’m still enjoying and anticipating each flower. . .blooming or not. They all get water. They all get smiled at (a lot because I love my little garden!). they all have to dodge the paparazzi (me!). They all get admired and cared for. There’s not one I leave behind.

Guess what? You’re not left behind either! God is preparing you, anticipating you, delighting in you, loving you. That woman in the flower pot next to you? Not your competition, not some battle to conquer. Love her! Encourage her as she prepares. Rejoice with as she blooms. And know that God has a heart FULL of love toward all our growing, preparing, blooming hearts. God will not leave you undone and God will never leave you behind!

about this Garden Lullaby series

Hope Gives a Eulogy SALE!

Lest I Forget, poem

Garden Lullaby

Choosing Life

Sierra V. FedorkoLeave a comment

Garden Lullaby, May 16, 2018

Your life is never going to be perfect. It will never be “just so.” It will be messy and different and beautiful and intricate. You won’t get the final say of your circumstances, but you will get the final say of your choices. And that’s a scary, freeing privilege.

The porch garden my husband and I are building is a vivid picture of my heart. It’s life being cultivated and cherished. It’s life spilling out of little corners and impossible places. It’s wild roots called possibility burrowed down for the chance to grow up. It’s knowing life is going to spring out of small beginnings and buried treasures. It’s loving the process and day-to-day admiration of something beautifully fragile and worth every bit of effort. . .

I choose life for myself, because God chose life for me and gives life to me, and ask this life to be lived out for Him and in Him and with Him. I choose hope. because He who made me IS hope. I choose cultivating a porch garden, because I have freedom to live fully in all corners of life I’m given.

The dreary weather made for some beautiful pictures. . .my heart represented in every one. God doing the impossible in me!

Choose life for yourself. Choose life for your people. Choose life because God wants life for you and wants you to live life (all in) for Him!

Who else knew a porch garden could be so profound?

read more about this Garden Lullaby series

It Wasn’t All Flowers poem

The Days Before My First Positive Pregnancy Test

Garden Lullaby

A Garden for Mother’s Day

Sierra V. FedorkoLeave a comment

Garden Lullaby

Mother’s Day, May 13, 2018

I’m aware that I share flower photos on here more than I (strategically) should, but I just don’t care enough to care that much. And I didn’t expect to walk out of our favorite grocery store with all sorts of flowers, tomato plants, flower pots, and wind chimes, but there we were pushing our cart half food, half spring. . .full joy!

We spent the afternoon with fingers in soil and hands in life and hearts filled with brave, new adventure. May husband and I have wanted to start a garden, but don’t have the means quiet yet to leap into all of that. So we are filling our porch with all manner of life and loving every minute of it.

Living is really quite ordinary, but sometimes it’s taking brave new adventures, celebrating unexpectedly, and watching big life happen in little corners and small spaces.

I’ve got so many more thoughts on this, but I also wanna get back to the plant stuff and join my husand in the rest of our Sunday adventure.

Also, thinking of all who are simultaneously holding much grief + celebration today. Live this day full in God’s strength whether it be in grief or joy or both. Pour out your heart. Rest in God. Laugh in joy. Whatever your today is. . .let it be that and let it be lived in the absolute trust of our Life-Giver.

about this Garden Lullaby series

sharing another garden journal entry tomorrow!

Garden Lullaby

It Wasn’t All Flowers

Sierra V. Fedorko1 Comment

it wasn’t all flowers,
but also it was.

snapdragons, geraniums,
zinnias and roses.
wild things on my table,
and on the windowsill.

and it was me,
like a seed,
cracked open and broken,
under darkness with water
cold over by bones
and it was light
I could not see,
all the warmth
I could not feel.
if not a mother, no idea
who I could be.

rain fell with promise.
storms raged in anguish.
there was noise, but it
was silence for me.
I grew, then died,
grew again, then bloomed
and it wasn’t
just one thing
I became.

the garden outgrew my soul,
and I towered with life
like a lighthouse at ocean
nothing around but hope.

and I was life in a hundred ways. . .
out at sea, in the garden, underground,
in the questions, holding flowers,
pouring sorrow, always seen
always loved by my God.

it was armfuls of spring
repeatedly in winter.
so it wasn’t all flowers,
but it was.-S.V.F. #sierravfpoetry

-S.V.F.

Garden Lullaby series launches tomorrow! Looking forward to sharing how God used the garden to help me heal through infertility. Done in “real time” as I’m sharing past personal reflections!