Latest / The Seed Project / The Garden We Leave Behind

Transcript

The Garden We Leave Behind · The Seed Project

• 0:01
  Hey, friend.
• 0:02
  Welcome to Sunday Seed.
• 0:03
  I'm Charlotte Edwards, and I believe small seeds create big impact.
• 0:08
  Each week, we'll plant one.
• 0:10
  Let's dig in.
• 0:13
  Today is Mother's Day.
• 0:15
  I've been incredibly blessed with strong women in my life.
• 0:19
  My grandmother, my mother, my godmother, and my aunts.
• 0:23
  Women who never sat down and lectured me about life.
• 0:27
  They just lived it, and lived it well, right out in front of me.
• 0:31
  And in the living, they gave me so many things, so many attributes and characteristics I hold close to my heart.
• 0:40
  Love, hope, faith, grit, courage, confidence, definitely a little bit of sass, but joy, laughter, and beauty.
• 0:52
  My grandmother showed me how important it was just to be together in the simple things.
• 0:59
  I grew up having tea parties with her.
• 1:01
  She was strong.
• 1:02
  She was funny.
• 1:04
  And our tea parties, well, they definitely were not the traditional English tea parties.
• 1:08
  They had a little more of a Southern flair to them with our little mini glass Coca-Cola bottles, some Cheez-Its, and Hydrox.
• 1:17
  She loved Hydrox cookies.
• 1:19
  And maybe if we were lucky, we'd have our Hershey Kisses to top it off.
• 1:25
  I loved to watch her sew, and we'd watch her favorite soap operas.
• 1:29
  General Hospital was always on.
• 1:32
  And in that afternoons, it was just a time for us to be together, to share a day, to have conversations.
• 1:39
  I always felt special and included just to be with her.
• 1:44
  And my mom, well, she's my rock.
• 1:48
  And goodness, there are just not enough words.
• 1:51
  She's simply the reason I am who I am.
• 1:55
  My godmother, part mom, part friend, she believed in me before I even believed in myself.
• 2:02
  And she made me a Bitty.
• 2:05
  And my aunts, some who fill the rooms with laughter and card games.
• 2:11
  Others who quietly showed me it was okay to be exactly who I am and embrace all my quirkiness.
• 2:18
  These women didn't just hand me the tools to survive hard things.
• 2:22
  Together, they planted the garden that became me.
• 2:26
  I didn't know it was happening.
• 2:28
  I wasn't taking notes.
• 2:29
  I was just watching and absorbing.
• 2:33
  And then one day, I just started to notice.
• 2:36
  I noticed how I handled something hard, or the way I showed up for someone who needed me, or when I chose faith over fear.
• 2:45
  It all started making more sense.
• 2:47
  I caught glimpses of them, each one of them in me, and they planted that, and they may never even know it.
• 2:56
  Proverbs thirty-one, twenty-eight says,"Her children rise up and call her blessed." I've read that verse multiple times, and I've always thought of it more as a standard, something to live up to, a bar set really high.
• 3:13
  But now as I read it, I read it as a result.
• 3:16
  It's not how you perform, but how you live.
• 3:19
  A blessed woman isn't the one who does everything right.
• 3:22
  She's the one whose life grew into something that people around her could lean on.
• 3:27
  We're mothers, we're daughters, we're aunties, and some of us are biddies.
• 3:33
  But most of us have a little bit of all these women in our lives.
• 3:37
  We're standing in the middle of something, something we did not start and certainly won't finish.
• 3:42
  The women before us showed up in the hard seasons and in the ordinary ones, sometimes with no evidence that anything was actually getting through.
• 3:51
  They passed down love, faith, and grit.
• 3:55
  And for me, they also passed down the simple things of card nights, tea parties, afternoon conversations, small things, but sacred things that make life worth living.
• 4:07
  The joy in the middle of the ordinary.
• 4:09
  They planted the garden that became me.
• 4:12
  And right now, today, maybe sometime this week or on a random Tuesday, someone's watching you the same way you watch them, taking in everything you didn't even know that you were teaching.
• 4:26
  So here's the seed on this Mother's Day.
• 4:29
  Think of one woman who gave you something you still carry, something you're grateful for.
• 4:34
  And then ask yourself quietly, honestly, what am I planting right now?
• 4:39
  Not what you're achieving or what you're providing, but what are you passing down to the people that you love, the people that are close enough to watch, to listen, to absorb?
• 4:51
  That's your seed.
• 4:53
  Now go plant something good.