Through the Windowpane

“For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.”
1 Corinthians 13:12

Like My Mother Before Me

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart (Galatians 6:9 NKJV).”

There’s about five weeks of summer left, and I’m doing all I can to make it last. After a long string of hot days, I’m spending mornings up in the garden again, sipping coffee and reading my Bible under the shade of a walnut tree that’s next to my husband’s “Cucumber Haus.”

The roof, constructed of nylon netting, is now covered with curly tendrils fingering their way skyward, while creeping vines around the base spill over into the path. When I step inside the wooden frame, I’m surrounded by a canopy of fuzzy green leaves and delicate yellow flowers. The air is cool and delicious, and I feel like a child again, exploring a secret garden. I love picking the prickly cucumbers, and listening to the bees buzz from blossom to blossom.

The “Cucumber Haus” has become a spiritual dwelling place, a temporarily tabernacle. But its glory is short-lived. Come fall, the frost will strike with a vengeance, shriveling the life-giving vines to the ground. Still, the memory of this year’s harvest will be permanently fixed upon my heart.

Years ago, I began making pickles out of necessity because I married an over-zealous vegetable gardener. I didn’t learn the art of canning from my mother, however. Even though she loved to garden (she planted a modest salad garden every year), she was overly cautious about germs and deathly afraid of botulism. So it’s no surprise to me that she asked a woman at a local grocery store how to make pickles.

Now mind you, my mother has been with the Lord for 19 years. I didn’t know anything about this conversation until a couple weeks ago – after I had made my first batch of pickles. I received and email from a homeschool mom related to my husband’s sister through marriage. She wondered if I was the same Jill Novak that was married to Bobby Novak (that’s what Robert’s family calls him). After I let her know that, yes, indeed, I was “Bobby’s wife,” she wrote back saying, “I was reading your blog and I knew that you were the Jill I know. The Lord used your mom to change our family’s life. She witnessed to my mom in the produce section of the Eagle grocery store in Mundelein in 1979. She asked about making pickles (I remember what a prayer warrior your mom was)! As a result of that mother accepted Christ and through a series of events, my husband and I did also. Your mom used to say we were “shoe-string” relatives! We have been homeschooling since 1989, and have been blessed with 8 kids ranging from 25 to 6.”

I can just imagine my gregarious mother striking up a conversation with a total stranger in the grocery store about making pickles. I can hear the woman assuring her that there is really nothing to worry about if you follow the simple directions. I can see my mother’s face aglow with the thought of making her own pickles. And before you know it, she shares about her faith and her relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. She makes Him so appealing, so appetizing, that this woman accepts Him as her Savior right there and then. The two women exchange recipes that day – one for Kosher Dills, and the other for eternal life; my mother’s evangelism is winsome at best.

I’ll never know how many people my mother led to the Lord in her lifetime through normal, everyday conversations about things like making pickles. She didn’t go out of her way to evangelize the world; she just bloomed where she was planted. People tend to laugh at me, too, because I have a way of spilling my guts and sharing my faith with total strangers (especially at garage sales). That’s why hearing this story about my mother, 27 years after the fact, moved me to tears. The older I get, the more I miss her, and after all these years, the Lord confirmed something I already suspected – I truly am my mother’s daughter.

Well, this is the fourth time that I’m harvesting cucumbers this season. As I pick, slice, and can pickles, I’m passing down recipes to my own children: the joy of growing a garden, the sweet and spicy smell of pickles simmering on the stove, and the appetizing aroma of a relationship with the living God, the recipe for eternal life. For the memories I make now will be permanently fixed upon their hearts, and I will be remembered, like my mother before me, as a woman who nurtured her children’s souls, and reaped an abundant harvest – a winsome evangelism at best!

 

An Intoxicating Auroma

But thanks be to God! For through what Christ has done, He has triumphed over us so that now wherever we go,
He uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Gospel like a sweet perfume.
As far as God is concerned there is a sweet wholesome fragrance in our lives.
It is the fragrance of Christ within us, an aroma to both the saved and unsaved all around us.
(2 Corinthians 2:14-15 LB)

This is a bountiful year for the apple tree at the hedgerow. We spent precious hours under its fragrant bower this spring, celebrating the delicate scent of paper thin petals. Now the branches, heavy with yellow and rose dappled apples give us cause us to rejoice.

Up in the garden the Spanish onions, white and bulbous, are popping out of the ground and the globe basil in the herb bed next to the house is just beginning to flower. All of these ingredients will simmer together to make a pot with the most intoxicating aroma. Yes, it’s Tomato-Apple Chutney time! But before this wonderful concoction can be ladled into hot sterile canning jars, the apples must be peeled, sliced, and cored, the onions skinned and cut into quarters, and the tomatoes picked, blanched, and chopped.

We’ve been feasting on vine-ripened tomatoes ever since the middle of July. My husband planted two different varieties of cherry tomatoes this year–sweet 100’s and cupids–that ripened fast and furious. I’ve been oven-drying these sumptuous tidbits and popping them in freezer bags to enjoy later this winter.

The larger tomatoes–early girls, romas, and beefsteaks–ripened shortly, thereafter. We gathered at a leisurely pace (in mid-July), strolling up to the garden to pick a ripe tomato or two for tomato basil sandwiches or garden fresh salads. Then by mid-August, when the sun began to lose its strength, the garden took on a golden hue. The tomato crop matured and we were barely able to keep up with the bounty as we hauled bushel full after bushel full down to the house in our trusty old wagon. We mainly sliced those tomatoes into quarters, adding a dash of salt to freeze and process later.

This year’s abundant harvest is ample reward for my husband’s labor of love. He staked each of the 50 tomato plants with one pole of rebar, pounding it deep into the ground. This was just to gird up the tomato cages for the duration of the growing season. After weekly downpours and a few violent summer storms, they mostly stood straight and erect, heavily laden with fruit.

If you’ve ever picked home-grown tomatoes you know how that one-of-a kind fragrance rubs off on you. The first tomatoes usually ripen in the hidden recesses of the plant, so as you part the leaves and pick the reddest juiciest ones, the spicy scent lingers on your green-stained fingers and shirt cuffs. We call this pungent odor “tomato perfume,” and it reminds me of another perfume I’ve been told that I possess – one that is produced under similar conditions.

Sometimes the little girls ask for a piece of my clothing to snuggle with at night – a cotton or flannel pajama top they call a “snuff.” Actually, almost any clothing item of mine will do as long as it has that special mommy perfume on it. Sometimes they’ll just bury their heads in my chest and breathe deeply of that nurturing, bonding fragrance, and they’ll say, “Oh, you smell so good.”

In many ways we mothers are just like those heavy laden tomatoes up in the garden, staked up by the Lord, deeply grounded in His word, supported by His sheltering arms through the downpours and storms of life, until we come forth in due season, releasing the fragrance of Christ.

Somehow in my mind’s eye tomato perfume and mommy perfume are interchangeably mixed this summer. As the tomatoes rub off on me, I rub off on my children – a smell I don’t want them to ever forget. When I invite them to go up to the garden with me to pick tomatoes, they groan, “Do we have to pick again?” “Yes,” I say. “We won’t have many moments like these left. Summer’s almost over and I want your company.” Soon they forget the hot sun and scratchy tomato leaves. We quickly fill a huge basket together, and then they’re off chasing other childish pursuits, like trying to catch the dog and hold him prisoner in the “Cucumber Haus.”

As the dog barks and dodges the grabbing hands, I laugh. Stooping over to fill yet another dress-full of tomatoes, I empty my harvest into a bushel full of memories–soon to be bottled in jars of golden hue, and I marvel at the intoxicating aroma–the unforgettable fragrance of the life-giver Himself.

 

No Dish Left Behind!

I’ve been called a lot of things by my kids, and one that I really resemble is a Mommunist. How this political take over started in my own home was quite innocent enough. One day, disgusted with the state of affairs in our home (a.k.a. compound), namely the little capitalists leaving dirty dishes behind them in every room, it occurred to me that if President Bush could have an initiative called “No child left behind,” then I could have a little initiative of my own called “No dish left behind!” Well, that’s all I had to say, and I was justifiably accused of being a Mommunist.

The definition of socialism is an ideology with the core belief that a society should exist in which popular collectives control the means of power, and therefore the means of production.

If that doesn’t sound like my job I don’t know what does!

If the shoe fits, wear it! If the dish is dirty, take it back to the kitchen!

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