Dear Reader:

It all began with a bench…the place where my fearlessness finally manifested itself.

It was my birthday of 2012… the Ya’s surprised me with a beautiful wooden bench for the then non-existent garden…the vague dream that both excited and terrified me simultaneously.

For a year the bench sat on the (now) B&B side taunting me…”Where is the garden I am supposed to sit in”…it seemed to mock me each time I ventured over…

My problem? I am a visual learner and I couldn’t “see” the garden…I knew what I wanted… a whimsical garden filled with imagination, as well as, tradition, a garden for both adults and grandchildren …but how to mix the two…how to start?

I gave myself until my next birthday to start…and it was looming closer and closer. Then a series of happenstances occurred to afford me the opportunity to gather my courage and take a giant step in faith.

A beautiful and completely unexpected gift arrived from my beloved Poppy which allowed me to build the deck in August of 2013. Once again I knew what the final version of the deck should look like (in my mind) but not exactly how to explain it to a builder. Kirk Stewart came through for me….with friends to help me make my vision a reality.

Then one day…just a few days before my birthday rolled around in 2013…Anne showed up to see the deck…and said “It’s time…no more excuses…and gave me a little stone from Mepkin Abbey It said simply BEGIN!  Just begin! Do something! BEGIN!

The next day she arrived with orange tape and said that beginnings always start with a path...and that would be the beginning of the garden. She was right!

The beginning of the garden began with four stepping stones (Mandy had made me for Christmas that year) orange tape, and Anne. A few days later Doodle arrived and we discussed plants and flowers to place beside the path. A quick trip to Hollow Tree Nursery, many donations from family/friends and one month later….the vision was already taking shape.

Shortly thereafter…John Lee built the moon gate for the garden, and my neighbor Julie, gave me two picket fences she didn’t want from her garage. …The garden continued taking shape.

By the next spring…I had saved (also with gift cards from the family) & purchased the fountain… with the bench that started it all sitting right beside it…so I could hear the gurgle of new life and hope continuing to grow each season.

I decided this saying would be appropriate in the garden because it had been my secret fear…that I wouldn’t live long enough to see my garden. At the time I started…things weren’t going well…at all. “Little c” was not staying “little.”

The last few months before retiring I had images of me working in a garden…which was pretty ridiculous at the time since I had never gardened and was completely clueless about things like potting soil, fertilizer, plants in general, when to plant, how to plant, etc.

The vision, however, stuck with me and when I finally emerged from behind my self-inflicted prison bars of fearfulness…I discovered a whole new world. It was the same with the creation of the blog…and now I see that the two were supposed to come together…and they have.

The wonderful world I live in today is one of fearlessness…it consists of writing, gardening, storytelling…and babysitting. It is the world I always dreamed about but feared would be cut short by “little c”….however God and His instruments of medicine (my wonderful doctors) have decided to let me enjoy this slice of heaven (for however long) while still on earth. I am eternally and humbly grateful.

When dreams come true:

Margaret Wheatly (“Love is the Source of Fearlessness”- Awakin Weekly) wrote recently along this same lesson on courage that I have learned since my retirement. (Here is an excerpt)

Some of the prison bars that we have constructed for ourselves are our fear of losing our jobs. Our fear of not being liked. Our need for approval. Our desire to make important changes but not have to risk anything at all. So, we still want the comfort of this life and it feels like a bigger risk to step out and say, “No,” or to say, “You can’t do that to me.”

“It feels like a larger risk, because I think the real prison we’re in is our affluence, and our focus on our affluence around material goods. I offer you this to think about: what is it that keeps you from acting fearlessly? […]”

“…What if we could offer our work as a gift so lightly, and with so much love, that that’s really the source of fearlessness? We don’t need it to be accepted in any one way. We don’t need it to create any certain outcome. We don’t need it to be any one thing.”

“It is in the way we offer it, that the work transforms us. It is in the way we offer our work as a gift to those we love, to those we care about, to the issues we care about. It is in the way we offer the work that we find fearlessness. Beyond hope and fear, I think, is the possibility of love.”

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So until tomorrow…Father…give us the courage to begin…to simply begin. Begin a new life… a new relationship with You, a new job, a new way of evaluating happiness and giving back…a new way of finding the peace we seek each day.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh