Memorial to a Busy Life

"As it fell upon a day

in the merry month of May

Sitting in a pleasant shade

which a grove of myrtles made."

Richard Barnfield

The trouble is that May is so busy.   There is no time to sit in the shade!  There are graduations, bridal showers, baby showers, birthday parties to plan and flowers to plant.  The rosebushes need to be pruned of their old dead wood.  Four trips to the garden center and mulch still has not been bought.  Two more flower pots in the yard need to be filled with something.  I think maybe coleus, begonia and ferns this year.  As the days grow longer and finally warmer I have worked at getting the flower pots filled and tucked into various corners of the yard.

In the meantime the perennials are coming along nicely.  My bleeding heart bush blooms without fail.  In our previous house I had a beautiful white bleeding heart.  I miss it.  But the hostas and lilies are doing nicely.  I can't wait to see blooms on my clematis!

This is the first year I've left the bottle tree out all winter and it seems to have come through the icy weather just fine.  I can't say the same for some of my plants.  I lost four rosebushes this year.  It was a hard winter.

Work has been busy and hectic this spring with many changes going on.  I have never been the kind of person who welcomed change very well.  I wouldn't really say that I'm set in my ways, but there is definitely an unsettling feeling of the unknown that I am feeling in the workplace lately.

But then I remember that Bible verse "Be Still and Know that I am God."  There is no need for me to worry.  I need to practice the part about "Be Still".  I have always been such an impatient person and have trouble sitting back and not doing. 

I was thinking about this very thing the other day when I pulled into Woodlawn Cemetery to sit and eat my lunch before going back to work.  I saw the old stone shaped like a pulpit with a Bible on top and just had to stop.

Time has a way of marching on, no matter how much we scurry and worry. I wonder how many of these people rushed through life, worrying about the trivial, forgetting to sit down and take a breath and enjoy the life that they had been given.

And yet here they are.  And around them the grass is still green, the leaves have filled out on the trees.  Another spring has come and gone.  Time has gone on even without them here to worry and wonder. 


















And as I remember my own loved ones on this memorial weekend, I will try to slow down, take a breath, realize that life will go on whether I fuss and fret.  I will concentrate on enjoying the moment that God has given me.  

And I will celebrate the 13th birthday of my beautiful granddaughter Shannon.

It seems like just yesterday that she looked like this!!!

Time passes quickly and we can't slow it down.  We have one life to celebrate, to love, to learn and to live.  I don't want to waste a minute of it worrying about endless things that I have no control over.  My wish to you is that you can make the most of yours as well and live this spring to the fullest!