Amazing love, how can it be...

Farm pond at Kura's, West Suffield, CT
I picked blueberries and raspberries here in August.


I had a dream awhile ago in which I moved back to where I had grown up. (My family moved when I was 13 to another country.)
In my dream, I was revisiting an old boyfriend.
I discovered that, somehow, I'd had a baby when I was young which I didn't know about. (How weird is that, but you can do and be anything in your dreams, right?)
They thought the child should know who it's mother was.
The child, a boy, was now about 4. The father had custody, and both of us were single, so we were considering reigniting the relationship due to this child. We met, without the child realizing exactly who I was. I can remember looking across the room, and seeing this child for the first time. He was playing.
All of a sudden, the moment I laid eyes on him, I got this amazing unexplainable rush of emotion.
It was an absolute unconditional love and acceptance of this child.
I would do anything for him. I would love him forever and beyond without condition.
I immediately accepted him for exactly what and who he was.
Just like that.

I have to stop here and explain something to those of you who have your own children. I have none of my own. Never had the privilege. I have 2 step kids that I love, and told them when they were preteens that I love them even if they didn't love me back. I can remember that moment to this day, and their faces when I told them. That was nearly 20 years ago.

This dream has stayed with me, and I remember being so thankful when I woke up that I got to experience that. I can only assume that all parents have this amazingly deep feeling of unconditional love for their children.

I was thinking last night again about this dream as I read the last few pages of 'At First Sight' by Nicholas Sparks, about when his wife died giving birth to their only child. As the tears ran down my face, I remembered that dream. And a new thought occurred to me.

This must have been to some degree what God felt when He looked down at mankind, and decided to give up His only Son for us. When God looked down with the fierce unconditional love that we cannot even imagine - there was no other option for our salvation. This wasn't even a multiple choice question. There was no thought of 'there must be some other way'. His love was so amazing, so deep, so beyond what we feel even for our children, that He did what He had to do because of His love for us.
It was at that moment that I had a beginning of understanding of parental love. Sacrificial love. The kind of love that you would do absolutely anything for the good of your child.

I love my step kids. I love my nieces and nephews. I love my husband, love my parents. My love and need for them overwhelms me sometimes. But I know it can't even come close to what God feels for us. It just can't. His is on a whole other level.

I was pregnant for 7 weeks once. I remember how my feelings even at that point had gotten to where the baby was more important than myself. I would have done whatever I could for it's health and safety. Unfortunately, nothing could be done to save it.
But I am SO THANKFUL that I got to experience even that little bit.

I feel the same way about this dream. Maybe God, in His goodness and mercy, gave me that feeling, so I could have but a moment to know what it was like. And to have some glimpse of His deep and fathomless love for me.

It's an amazing thing to love something that much. It's what makes life worth living.

Something stinky...

Well. That's over and done with.
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For a few days now, when I went out my front door, or opened my living room window, this sickly sweet nasty odor came wafting in. I figured something must have crawled either under the front cement step, or under the bushes somewhere and kicked the bucket, so to speak.
I looked briefly, but couldn't detect exactly where the smell was emanating from. All I know is, when I got too close to ground level, it was bad. Real bad.
With only a 2 inch opening behind the cement step, odds were that if anything crawled in there, it had to be a small rodent. In which case, I wouldn't be able to access it, and would have to live with it it until it completely decomposed. Ugh.
Today, upon opening the front window to try to cool off the house, I decided I'd had enough. I would play detective and come to the bottom of this if I could.
Armed with a weak flashlight and some garden gloves, I began pulling back branches from the very large (way too large, if you ask me) evergreen to see down to the bottom. This baby is about 6 feet across and 2 - 2 1/2 feet tall. One of those ugly evergreens everyone planted 20 years ago too close to the house, and now it needs to be cut out completely.
Anyway, I finally thought I detected something. So I got my garden rake, and began tentatively pulling out mulch from under this giant bush. I thought I saw a small flat mouse-like rodent.

Nope. Nothing came out with the rake but mulch.
I looked further in.
There it was. I pulled out a slightly flattened much dead squirrel. Apparently something happened to it (West Nile? Lost a fight with a hawk? Too big of leap off the deck?...) and it crawled, thank you very much, under my bush to die. (Why not the woods? There are ACRES of woods around my house!)
Well, it finally got a decent burial. I couldn't bury it too deep, as there were too many tree roots. I just hope the coyotes don't come this close to the house...

PS: As much as I love to include photos in my blog ---I think I will forgo it this time. :0)