Wednesday July 9th

About a month and a half ago, I was driving to girls' camp with a bunch of other ladies.  We were going to spend the day with our girls by going on a hike and attending dinner and a fireside.  Anyway, there was one lady in the van that had moved into town recently and I was still trying to get to know.  So I asked her what her interests were, besides mothering.  She seemed pretty stumped, and it got me thinking about how I would answer such a question.  Mothering seems to take up my whole life, but surely I must have some other interests outside of that job?  I mean, I wasn't always a mother, but what did I do before my children came along? So I've been pondering the question ever since. 

 I soon realized that one thing I love is flowers.  This is somewhat unfortunate, because I live in a very dry climate that isn't very good for growing flowers.  But we've manged to come up with a pretty good variety of flowers that will do well here.  It's nothing like the eastern part of the country, but they're still pretty.

 And sure enough, when The Captain's sister came to stay with us for the Fourth of July, she asked me what my hobbies were.  I should have seen that coming from a mile away, because anything you give out generally comes back to you, and I definitely had that coming.  But thank goodness I had given it some thought, and I could tell her that I loved my flowers and spent lots of time on my flower beds.

Today I was thinking that I needed to take some stock photos.  I write my posts late at night, and most of the time I don't know what I'm going to write about until I sit down and stare at the screen for a few minutes.  So I decided to just go out and take some pictures of things in my life that might end up in a blog post so that I would have some pictures on hand.

It didn't take me long to remember that I love photography!  I had so much fun taking pictures of my flowers.  I took pictures of lots of other things, as well, but I especially enjoyed taking pictures of the flowers. I suddenly remembered how I had entered photographs in the county fair and won ribbons.  I remembered that this was one of my hobbies! Hooray!  I have hobbies!  I am more than just a mother! 

Being a mother is the most important thing I do, or will probably ever do, but I am grateful to the Lord for helping me to see that there is more to me than just dishes and laundry. Even though I have lots of kids to take care of, I am still a person with varied interests and talents.  It's so easy to forget. But today the Lord reminded me.