Lucky me, Lucky me

Way back in college, I exercised every day for a whole summer. It felt great. I loved it. I often thought about how wonderful it was that all I had to do was move around for 30 minutes a day, and Heavenly Father would bless me to have more energy, more muscle, more stamina, more flexibility, and more spring in my step! I just had to show the smallest effort, and He'd bless me in so many ways. Unfortunately, school started back up in the fall, the treadmill at the Lundstrom broke down, and I stopped exercising. But I remember how good it felt, and one day I'll do it again. But this isn't a post about me feeling guilty. It's a post about how much Heavenly Father delights to bless us when we put forth just a small amount of effort to go the extra mile.

These last few weeks, I've been experiencing a similar phenomenon to those days of exercising. I've been getting into food canning. Woo! It's awesome! These fruit trees and vegetable plants put forth an abundance of food, without me even paying attention to them. Most years, I try to use the food when it's fresh, but unfailingly I waste 90% of it. Not this year! I've been blessed with an abundance of canning jars from my mother-in-law, and we are canning all our food that can possibly be canned this season. We've done strawberry jam, apricots and apricot jam, spiced tomato jam (sounds weird, but it's so yummy), and pickled beets so far, and we're doing nectarines tomorrow. Next Saturday we'll do peaches and more tomatoes, and in a few more weeks we'll do grape jelly. We may even go crazy and do that pepper jelly I've heard about.

My point is not to brag, far from it. My point is that canning is not so hard after all! I've put forth just a tiny bit of effort, and Heavenly Father has blessed me with free food for my family. Free food that doesn't have any artificial preservatives or corn syrup or yellow #5. Free food that will taste so fresh and yummy in the dead of winter. And food that is so pretty - have you ever taken the time to enjoy the beauty that is a jar of pickled beets?

The other blessing that has hit me, as I've done this canning, is that I have power. Power to preserve food so I can feed my husband and children. In a time of uncertainty and job cutbacks, that means more to me than I can say.

Thanks be to Heavenly Father for the miracle of growing things. I'll never understand how a seemingly dead seed can be placed in cold, dry dirt, be watered until muddy, get warmed by the sun, and produce juicy tomatoes and delectable strawberries. Well, maybe I'll understand it one day, but for me in this life, that is a miracle.