Last Saturday was a special day for me. It wasn’t special because it was my Birthday or a Holiday, but it was special because God spoke to me in one of His unique and personal ways.

We have been working on our house. It began as a one section project and has turned into a full house renovation. It is being redone from the inside out. We had some friends who were going to come down and help us with the gutting process, so I went over to the Cider Mill to get some cider to have with dinner that night. I had planned to go the day before to make things easier but sometimes plans don’t work out the way you would like them to.

I got the cider and checked out. As I began to walk away, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder. It was a young girl who was working at the other register. She looked at me and asked me, “Did you work at Dean’s Mill School?” I replied, “yes.” I had worked there for many years as a Special Education Paraprofessional. She went on to share with me that she had been in one of the fourth-grade classes where I had been working.  I used sign language at my job there. I had been working with a boy in her class. She told me about how I inspired her in such a way she was learning sign language, and it had impacted her in how she thought about her future.  I left there feeling incredibly encouraged.  It had been over ten years since I had been in that class, yet she recognized me and was full of such joy and passion as she shares it all with me.

After I left there, I went to our house to help gut stuff. The room I worked in was a room that had many memories for me. This house is the house I grew up in, and it is where we have raised our boys. My husband and I started the process, and as I continued to take the walls down in there, memories flooded back. It is a room where I struggled to learn about who I was, and who God was. It is a room where I began my walk with the Lord and the same room where I battled with God about my loneliness and feeling abandoned by Him. It is the room where I turned my back on Him for a season. This room is where I was pregnant with my oldest son and were where my first memories as a mother began. It is the room where I have had countless conversations with my children, and it is where I have prayed over them as they slept. It is the room where I wrote letters to my husband when he was just my friend, and there was no hope at the time to be anything more.

Tears ran down my face uncontrollably. It took me by surprise. All through this day, I received a reminder from the Lord that every moment matters. That girl in that class was not someone I worked with individually. It was a child in the class, who was watching me. She saw the way I helped that boy, and she saw how I was with the other children. She watched how I lived and how I coped with my hearing loss, as I helped there. The way I lived spoke to her. It inspired her. It mattered. Share on X

I thought about that as the memories continue to flood my mind and my heart. I heard God gently speak to me with such love and encouragement. All those memories mattered. All those words and prayers mattered. All the struggles mattered. Everything God allows and does, matters. Share on X

I have spent an immense amount of time regretting things. Words that I have spoken, and behaviors that have come out of deep hurt and brokenness. Things I have done and those things I haven’t done. God was encouraging me to see what He did do in that girl, and what He was doing in this project, in my family, and in me despite it all.

²⁶ And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; ²⁷ and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. ²⁸ The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. ²⁹ But when the crop permits, he immediately ^[g]puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” Mark 4:26-29

I pray that we keep planting seeds. It is easy to get discouraged or to think that nothing we do, matters. It all matters and God can use it all for His glory and His Kingdom. May we keep planting seeds until we go home with the Lord. You never know who is watching or who you will inspire and spur on as you do.