Thanks God for this beautiful sunshine!

I've just spent two glorious days in the sunshine, working in the garden and doing mega-loads of laundry.
Spring is most definately in the air- even if it's not yet on the calendar. It's made me excited to start planting things again. Yesterday I weeded one of the raised veggie beds and one of the sections of the front yard, planted kale, onions, carrots, peas, borlotti beans, raspberries and ying yang beans. I also thinned out carrots, parsnips, spinach and lettuce seedlings. Not bad given that I haven't been out in the garden for weeks!

A better additude

I was browsing through some blogs the other day, reading comments. My eye was drawn to one reader who was commenting on her need to have a "better additude". Now my inner-teacher immediately started to criticize the poor spelling (What do they teach them in these schools?) and given that the comments were riddled with bad spelling, poor grammar and little to no punctuation, I had a lot of fodder for my critique!

But throughout the day the "better additude" statement kept coming back to me. God has been rebuking me lately for my pride and I realised this is one area where I tend to let my prideful attitude take over. Instead of putting others down for their spelling mistakes, I should be so thankful that I was able to receive a good education. I really do want to change my attitude so that I'm not so critical of others.

Even once I'd reached this point, it kept niggling at me. Additude, ADD-itude. What I should be striving for is to have a heart that adds to those around me. Do my conversations build others up? Do I add or do I subtract from others lives? I'm sad to say, I don't think I have been adding. I'm prone to getting caught up in negative thinking and feeling that my choices, my way of doing things is better. But "it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no-one can boast." It doesn't matter to God how good my spelling or anything else is- what matters is if I have faith in Jesus.

So, I'm pledging to have "a better additude" from this point on. To strive to build others up. And to remind myself when I get judgemental, that it is only by God's grace that I'm saved!

Simple Things

I'm so happy and grateful that I've had the chance to break free from the consumer mindset! I'm currently sitting and watching my little boy play with a shape sorting toy that a friend made him from a margarine container and bottle tops. He's getting so much joy out of a simple object, I'm getting joy from seeing him having fun and from being reminded of the love from our friend and no money has changed hands to bring this about, just creativity and some recycling! He might have just as much fun with something purchased from the shop, but we'd lose all the rest of the joy that comes from using simple handmade things.
It's so great to be able to recognise the lies that advertising tells us- you need this latest gizmo or gadget to be happy. Actually, no, we don't! I hope I can impart this to my boy as he grows up so that he never feels like he has to buy stuff in order to be satisfied.