You might be wondering what a girl that has a Bible verse ready to post tomorrow for Scripture Memory team and has been talking about natural products that come from the Lord’s good creation and the lottery, all fit together…
Hang with me because what is winning the lottery to me is probably different from the ticket buying crowd.
I’m showing a third of my winnings on the salad…the tomatoes – and the people behind the tomatoes, are my prize!
Yesterday the Salesman’s dad called to thank me for some Thieves cough drops I’d given him. I was happy to hear that natural products were helping him. While we chatted on the phone, I told him I felt like I won the lottery because I’d diced one of the garden tomatoes for my lunch salad that he and Dona had sent home with me.
Here we are at the cusp of December wearing cuddle duds to keep warm, and I have a fresh garden ‘mater! I feel so blessed.
Grandma Dona made sure that a few prize-winning tomatoes came back over the mountain with me.
I’d like to honor her today on her 77th birthday and though I’ve given her a gift in person, these words spill out of the overflow of feeling like I won the lottery with being given her as a mother-in-law.
Getting rich in a relationship doesn’t usually happen quickly:
You marry a spouse. You choose a spouse; but, get a bonus family.
This bonus family can be your in-laws or out-laws, you get to decide when you scratch the ticket.
My reality was that my parents went on to glory and my bonus family became my family. Was I a loser or a winner?
God gives and God takes away. Blessed be the name of The Lord.
My in-laws are gifts.
I feel rich because I am loved by them both; but especially by my mother-in-love.
There is nothing like the love of a mother. Or a bonus mama.
She’s sown seeds of love into me from the moment we first met in the ladies room when she tied my big ‘ole bow on my 1980’s dress when my fingers were fumbling because I was meeting my mother-in-law —- I will never get over that — She tied the perfect bow for me to meet her.
She was a gift to me though she tied the bow on me.
Over the years she’s weeded and tended to my hurting soul and prayed when seasons changed and we’ve seen the LORD water my spirit.
I felt so loved as we hugged goodbye there in her Thanksgiving kitchen.
She overflowed with tender words as she played with my hair and held onto one shoulder while looking in my eyes and seemingly into the hollow place in my heart, or anyone’s heart, who has had to let go of their own mama way to early.
I remember her starting words:
“I’ve never tried to take your mother’s place…”
And you know what, she has never tried, she has loved, and what a powerful force to love someone truly is.
Our love has grown up and through the dirt into slivers of life and now into blooming beauty.
I am so thankful to the LORD for the gift of a mother-in-love.
I feel like I’ve won the lottery and never even purchased a ticket.
Happy 77th
May your days here on earth be blessed
I am happy to be doing life with you till God takes us to eternal rest
You are a prize in GOD’s, and my, eyes
Yes, you are a prize.
