Blueberry Blessings

DIA'S EDIT. IT'S A LOT BETTER :) I THINK SO, ANYWAY.

I love blueberries.  Not frozen, mass-processed, or store-bought berries (somehow paying the exorbitant prices required to bring blueberries to the masses takes all the flavor out of them for me).  

I love field blueberries that I have personally plucked, squatting in the early morning chill, relieving slumberous branches of their heavy purple clusters.  My mind wanders as my hands work, and there's a moment of quiet peace.  

This year we make a second trek out. We leave the children home to sleep, so interruptions promise to be few--but the weather threatens. We begin dropping berries into pails and the rain begins to drip.

As the wind picks up and thunder rumbles threateningly, I whisper a prayer.   My mind flickers to memories of twice past when I have requested divine intervention for peaceful weather and my pleas have been granted. I must be a weather whisperer. 

I begin to pluck faster as the rain picks up and I wonder what is it that allows such prayers to be answered. Is it priority? Does some other need take precedence?  Is that the case this morning? As the winds buffet and the chill creeps further into my bones, I wonder if this is one of those training trials--something the Lord gives me to teach me the merits of preparation? And as the weather worsens I begin to wonder; could it be punishment for pertinence?  

The husband's quick thinking and preparation come through; I don the trash bag he finds in the back of the truck with a new humility and enlightenment.

What I'm given is a gift—-not a superhero-like gift of wielding the weather, but the gift of understanding.  It IS audacious--even blasphemous-- to think that I can somehow command nature to suit my slightest whim, even ignoring instead of accepting and working with the blessing of rain.  

I do have power, but I am no more gifted than anyone else. It is a power granted through recognizing who does command nature and acknowledging that this happens only through the gift of my Savior's atonement.  

As the rain stops, I kneel and pluck glistening blueberries and admire the strength of God's munificent hand today in my petty little problem.