Day Twenty-Five - April 25, 2020

Today is Saturday! We have waited all week for today!! It’s grocery shopping day! I even pulled out jeans for the occasion! 

Sunshine and a beautiful walk to start this morning!

*****

Only I went into the grocery store today… Andrei, the kids and Nellie were tasked with sitting and watching the essential workers install shrubbery around the perimeter of the parking lot. 

Imagine my surprise when I exited the store to find the dog hanging out near a horse and buggy in the parking lot while the kids and Andrei were cuddling a baby bunny. 

I tried to make it clear that we were not taking the bunny home with us in the tissue box, only to turn and discover other people walking around the parking lot with disoriented baby bunnies as well. A collective effort rose up to save the baby bunnies from the deadly landscapers who had supposedly uprooted the family from their home. Kids, adults, shoppers, employees alike scrambled around to catch the frightened little ones… apparently they could run all over the paved lot but were too tiny to jump the curb to get back into the field. 

And here I was just looking forward to getting groceries today… who knew?

I kept thinking about those little bunnies and how they tried to get back home but couldn’t find their way. The curb was too high and the parking lot disorienting… As much as I don’t like touching animals - my kids love it and I can at least appreciate their willing desire to rescue the little ones from certain death.

Sometimes I, too, feel lost and disoriented - running around in circles trying to find my way home. Sometimes I feel like I keep coming to the end and just can’t seem to jump the curb to get home. Sometimes I feel like “mean, old, landscapers” come and wipe out some sense of security I took for granted. Not always … but sometimes. 

And isn’t just like God to send a crazy family (well - not the mom) of bunny lovers to come rescue us in our distress. Sometimes those “bunny-lovers” are weird and not packaged just the way we like… the wrong shape, color, smell, ethnicity. But love is love. 

I’m glad my tribe still plows forward, barreling right over my unwillingness… because they teach me humility in situations I don’t prefer.

And can you imagine that up the street from the bunny-rescue is a farm where apparently - according to Andrei - the cows need tender love, care and long grass… which he and Nellie graciously provided while I stood in line for milk. This family is weird… straight up odd. 

We discovered an incredibly unique succulent today - “sempervivum arachnoideum.” It is fabulous and delightful! A truly magnificent geometry lesson exudes from this fascinating succulent perennial that forms sort of a mat of tight rosettes with white cobwebby hairs at the tips. It is a monocarpic plant (flowers once, set seeds and die). The mother rosette (“hen”) produces many offsets (“chicks”) before it dies. 

We draw comfort from studying Creation. We see patterns and order… and even though we may not understand them entirely - we are in awe of their Creator. 

Psalms 139:14 

“I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex! 

Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking.

It simply amazes me to think about it!

How thoroughly you know me, Lord!”

So there you have it… grocery shopping Saturday. Packaged up and delivered to you with warm love and great affection.