I must admit that this blogging thing is sort of mysterious to me but strangely attractive. I am going to try to start with my rationale for the blog title and domain name (whatever that really means). I want to thank the folks who created spellcheck right out of the gate. I have already been prompted to correct myself three times and I am only on sentence four. I do believe that it takes a village, as Hillary says, and spellcheck is a part of my village! Without it, y’all would all see just how spelling-challenged I am. Okay, onward and hopefully upward….
My favorite image is that of the Tree of Life. Trees were a big part of my childhood. We had huge live oaks up and down my street and in and out of every neighborhood and park in my city. The roots of these trees pried up the sidewalks, reached out into the roads and made their way into every property. They seemed to go on forever and nothing could stop them as they braced themselves to support the trunks and branches laden with leaves and draped with spanish moss that grew up out of them. These trees dressed up our city and hinted to all that saw them that this was a special place. As many beautiful things do, they created much mischief as well. Drains were filled by their leaves and canals were tied up by thier roots in ways that instigated flash floods regularly. Insects of many kinds were given a lovely safe haven in their bark, leaves, moss and crooks and crannies. Man-made routes were cracked and warped at a rate far more rapid than any construction crew could correct.
If you want to see some amazing photos, take a look at this link. If you are like me, you will just scan through the history and gawk at the photos. If you are like my information-hungry spouse, you will probably read the stuff and remember it and sound really smart when you talk to people about live oaks in the future. If there are ever questions about live oaks on Jeopardy, Quiz Up or Trivia Pursuit, you will win.
Only grace could have made it possible for these dinosaurs of the arbor-world to survive and flourish in a city where the earth was below sea level and the soil was sandy. What a great metaphor they provide for us. They live off of anything and everything that comes their way. They have no power over what they are exposed to. All that provides them sustenance is gift. They also house an amazing number of cockroaches. Just sayin’. Y’all will want to be aware of that if you walk under one and notice something flying at you in the evening. I offer this bit of information to you as a gift.
Now for my segue….wait for it…it is subtle….
I have grown, or am growing, six human beings. They did not pick me to be their mother and for much of their lives ,they really had no power over what they were exposed to either. All that provides them sustenance is gift. They are gracegrown. They amaze me each and every day with their strength, beauty, ability to create mischief. Inside and outside of me, they have grown into their own beings with stunning uniqueness in-spite of being rooted in the same place, time and environment.
I hope to explore some of the grace which swirls amongst us as we move through our days. My goal is to find the traces of wisdom which sustain me, to illuminate the joys of this crazy ride called mother, to normalize some of the really crappy stuff that is inevitably there, and to wrap it all up in the shiny paper of humor which makes all things more palatable.
I am a faith-filled person so my default is that all of this is a gift from a God who is pretty amazing and entirely beyond my understanding. I see myself as gracegrown out of that perspective. I see all of us that way. That does not mean that I am going to be all preachy so y’all don’t have to worry.
I will probably also talk about food ’cause I really like it.
So far, so good. I have not yet tired of myself….
gracegrownliving 