The beginning is a great place to start! Click here for Day 1.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to grow blackberries here. They sprout up and creep out wherever any bird has dropped a seed. The ditches are full of them, as are the hedgerows. People spray them with weed killer and hire goats to eat them, but the blackberries can’t be beat. They line every road and eat up tamed property until it’s turned wild again with thorny brambles and stone-hard green fruits.
But if the summer is warm and the fall dry, the berries on all these wild vines begin to swell and ripen until they drip down in inky clusters. Everywhere, the air is heavy with the scent of sweet fruit and blackberry wine, and people come out with Tupperware bowls and empty ice cream buckets to forage for the makings of a pie.
My husband loves a good blackberry pie. He starts thinking of blackberry pie around June when the brambles are in bloom and the neighbors are in full blackberry attack mode. Mr. Greenlee is out in his yard with clippers and napalm, but Jeff is up on a ladder wearing leather gloves, carefully redirecting the willful vines through the evergreens so they’ll grow where the sun shines the brightest. He cranes his neck when we drive past berry-laden ditches and silently makes a plan for September.
When the berries start to soften in the sun, I know there will be buckets stowed between the seats of the minivan “just in case,” and extra trips out to Jeff’s favorite berry-picking spot. It’s right along a walking trail that follows a river past an eagle’s nest. People come there every day to run or ride horses and to watch the osprey swoop down into the water for fish. Sometimes there are otters or delightfully lazy snakes that slither slowly over the rocks and a boy who must remember that his mother doesn’t want him to pick blackberries with hands that stink of snake.
But rarely, very rarely, are there any other berry pickers. We live in a place where “organic” is practically a religion and people pride themselves on eating local and composting the leftovers. But berries? Well, berries are just a pain to pick.
I thought about this one afternoon when Jeff led us on a berry-picking mission down the gravel path along the river. The days had been particularly beautiful, warming the blackberries until they tasted like they’d been dipped in sugar. But we’d already been out picking several times, and I had other things on my mind. I did not feel like fighting the brambles and letting them claw through my jeans while I filled my bucket little by little with those frustratingly small berries. It seemed like a waste of time, and I still had a few splinters from the last time we did it.
“It’s such a short season, Kristie,” Jeff said when he noticed my lack of enthusiasm. “It could rain tomorrow and then it will all be over.”
It happened every year. When the clouds in the forecast resulted in actual precipitation, the berries turned snowy with mold in a matter of hours, and that was the end of the blackberry picking. We needed to take advantage of every sunny day that stretched into fall to fill up the buckets and gather in the harvest.
So I was silent and focused my attention on the task at hand. Birds flew overhead, swooping bugs into their beaks, fattening up for the long flight south. The kids chattered and hummed and filled themselves full of what was left of summer. It was lovely, really.
Faith stood next to me, slowly picking berries, turning each one over and checking for bugs before putting it in her bucket. “She is getting tall,” I thought. Her tenth birthday was coming up, and I was having trouble getting my mind around it. It’s such a short season, Kristie, I heard Jeff say, but he was far down the path with Jonathan, hacking down vines with a machete so the kids could pick the berries hiding underneath.
It’s such a short season. It seemed to me he had said the same thing much earlier in my life, at a time when I thought my talents were better used on something other than parenting. Foolishly, I thought God’s will for me was a little less…ordinary. I had failed to see the shortness of the season and the richness of the fruit all around me.
I looked at Faith. Her eyes are green, a little lighter than mine. She smiled. “You’re really good at picking berries, Mom,” she said.
I glanced down. Without even realizing it, I had filled the better part of my bucket.
“I think that’s the best way to do it,” she continued. “Just find a spot and start picking. If you keep walking, looking for a better spot, well, first of all, you might get lost, and second of all, you won’t get very many berries.”
“I think you’re exactly right,” I said, wondering how my life would have been different if I applied that advice to other areas of my life.
“So I think it’s just best to sit right down, and don’t even worry about the ones you can’t reach. If you can’t reach them, they’re not for you.” She shrugged at the simplicity of the thought.
It was a hard truth to swallow. The biggest and best berries were always just out of my reach, it seemed. Other paths were more interesting and less full of briars and that’s why more people walked there. That’s why I wanted to walk there.
It was foolish to sit down when the path kept on going, foolish to waste time picking berries and fighting brambles, foolish to embrace a task most people don’t want to do. It was foolish, but it was also brave and wonderful and perfectly delightful. Long after the vines have withered and the berries have gone, I will be enjoying the fruits of my labors. Rich pies, cobblers and jams, and a freezer full of fruit to carry us through the winter and beyond—all because we stayed faithful to the task. Long into winter and beyond, we will be enjoying the deep and satisfying harvest of a job well-done.
The season is short. The work is hard. But the result is worth it all.
Micah enjoying the fruit of the season
Thank you for joining us for this series. It has been a (busy) joy!
I have been challenged and encouraged by this series! I plan on reading it again an mulling over it even more. And thank you for taking the time to put three questions/tasks at the bottom of the posts. So helpful!
I just wanted to let you know what a blessing these posts have been to me. I’ve enjoyed each one and have been challenged and encouraged in my walk with God as a wife and mother. It is a short season and these posts have really helped me get my focus straight… Thankyou! I think I will read them again! Blessings to you and your family.
Wonderful post!
Just want to let you know that I nominated your blog for the Super Sweet Blog Award… check out my blog post for details!
Thank you for your dedication and honesty!! I’ve been truly blessed by this series, and by your blog! Many blessings to you and your family and a very Merry Christmas!
It was such a short season! thanks for your inspirations to other moms!
Made me cry – good tears of “it’s worth it.” Thank you for this terrific series!!!
Thank you, Jan!
I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts. You seem to have such balance and healthy perspective and have helped many of us keep ours. You certainly have reminded me of the true purpose for this season in my life and you truly have helped me to enjoy my children more. Thanks so much for making so many sacrifices to edify our lives. You have blessed me and built me up these past 30 days – and as a result you have blessed and built up my family. May the Lord repay you 100 fold and may you and your family be blessed exceedingly and abundantly far above all that you could ever ask or think! Merry Christmas……
Thank you so much, Sarah! I am humbled and grateful to know that these posts have been helpful to you. It has been helpful to me to write them. I have not prayed over any of my posts as much as I have over these last 30. I would wake up in the night almost every night and find that a prayer was on my lips for the next day’s post. It is all God’s work–not mine. I’m totally in this with all of you and pray that all of us can continue to grow in these areas!
You had asked for comments or feedback on your stories on your facebook post. On this last post “harvest” you could tie in the analogy more that just like reaping the bountiful blackberries yielded things to enjoy all winter, so our work with our children will yield fruit for the rest of our lives or “Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Yes, Connie, you are very right about that. The connection should be stronger. I did have another paragraph in there, but it was not coming out the way I wanted so I moved it (in order to work on it some more) and forgot to put it back in. That’s definitely something I would like to fix. Thanks so much for pointing that out!
Thank you for this blog, Kristie. I have been so blessed by your words. My “kids” grew up with you in Chilton for several years and have been out on their own for quite some time, but much of what you have written can be applied to life in general, not just child-rearing. I’m so proud of you and how you have been a blessing to so many! I’m sure your dream of being published is just around the corner!
Thank you, Sue! It has been fun to connect with your family on FB. I love seeing what your girls are doing. It’s a blessing to see them loving and serving the Lord with such passion. You all encourage me greatly, even from so far away!
Terri said it perfectly. I too have cried through many of the posts (including reading Terri’s comment) due to various trials, finding your blog this year was perfect timing and has shown me too that God can work through less than conventional ways to meet our needs be they spiritual, emotional or simple encouragement from friends in Christ. I believe that finding this blog was an answer to a prayer I never even prayed, but God knew I needed it. During the last 30 days, sometimes the fact that I knew I could read this blog was motivation for me to get out of bed in the morning! But even though you cannot to continue to write a post every day ( and trust me I can only imagine as a mother of 5 what a challenge and sacrifice this has been and WE TRULY appreciate it), I still have the Word of God to get up to and read every morning. It will ALWAYS be there, new and fresh every day. MERRY CHRISTMAS! By the way, I’m so glad to have gotten to know you through this post although we live 3000 miles away from each other!
Connie–it is wonderful to be brought together by our faith, isn’t it? I love being part of this great big family. I am thankful that we can minister grace to one another. Thank you for being willing to join me in this journey of growing in Christ.
Thank you so much for all that you do – I count this blog among the blessings in my life this year, and stop by whenever I can. This series has given me such insight, and always always perfectly timed. The holy spirit is working through you, there is no doubt in my mind. Thank you for being such a good writer, for opening up your heart and imperfections for us to all learn from and nod in commiseration. I teared up during this post, like I have while reading several others, because I am in this short season too, but also because it’s your last post in the series and I’ll sincerely miss it. I have this secret burning hope that you’ll write a book. A publisher would be a fool to not ask you to. Your work is a drink of cold water for those mothers who work in the home and those of us who work outside of it as well, who struggle every day to balance priorities and find meaning in every minute, including the noisy ones.
I cried like a baby when I read this. Your words are balm to my soul. It is a vulnerable thing to write like this, especially so many posts over a relatively short period of time. I felt quite insecure because I had to publish things before I was ready, sometimes, and I truly hoped the Lord would work through it anyway, in spite of my many shortcomings and obvious cracks. Your comment is an encouragement that the Holy Spirit is at work even in this small offering. Thank you so much for reading and taking the time to write what was needed for ME at just the right moment.
My favorite line: “I think that’s the best way to do it,” she continued. “Just find a spot and start picking. If you keep walking, looking for a better spot, well, first of all, you might get lost, and second of all, you won’t get very many berries.”
Assuming the branches are full….If you go to pick berries with a small bucket….that’s all you will get. If you go wtih a barrel that that is what you will get….if you go with a truck that is what you will get.
So it is with Faith (not the girl Faith, but faith in God)…When God is pouring down blessings from heaven…if we take a thimble to receive…a thimble full is all we will get….HOWEVER….!
Thank you so much for writing this. I came across it a few days ago and have been devouring it piece by piece ever since. See, we just became a family of 5. With 3 kids under 3 (the smallest two weeks old), I’ve started to feel like I’m coming up short (like REALLY short) with this whole parenting thing..I even have moments where I don’t even really like my oldest…at least not in this stubborned mean stage she’s in. I’m hoping that with God’s help, these feelings will pass soon. But in the meantime, your posts sure did help.
God bless and Merry Christmas!
Tatiana
I have loved loved loved this set of posts on children. I cried reading some of them. You are a lovely mother and a talented writed.
Your daughter is becoming very wise!!! Thanks so much for the series – I’ve really loved reading each post. 🙂
She is a very wise girl, and I am blessed to have her!
I’ve not commented at all, ever, but I want you to know I’ve read and enjoyed every last word of this series. Such wonderful food for thought an motivation. Thank you!
Thank you so much for taking the time to read and comment! I really appreciate it.