TJ Hirst

In the middle of my perennial garden bed, I sat between the weeds and the flowers, not knowing the difference. Sometimes perennials or wildflowers that aren’t in bloom can look a lot like weeds. I was a young mom and a young gardener inheriting a garden from previous owners.

Meanwhile, my neighbor across the street cleared and prepared her beds for an herb and vegetable garden. I craved turning over my own soil to plant new seeds or plants. I ripped at the plants that looked like weeds to me. Yet, as I proceeded, I felt a quiet urge to wait patiently and watch the garden, to not even pull the weeds. My nurturing instinct was louder than my impulsiveness, and I backed off the garden bed.

In that everyday gardening experience I became not only a more patient gardener but a more patient mother, working slowly and carefully in both realms.

My everyday realms are ordinary, but they are a microcosm to larger realms. Considering and connecting, comparing and contrasting everyday experiences to each other and to the larger world reveals truth. The grass is always greener somewhere else until light illuminates our own.

This is the 100^th post at tjhirst.com. In celebration, I reveal a new look and a new tagline, Illuminate Everyday. My husband, Paul, created this original web design to reflect my writing goals.

To illuminate is to provide or brighten with light, to make understandable, clarify, to enlighten. I am still seeking and finding what inspires, but the process to seek and find creative, intellectual or spiritual inspiration is not an anxious perusal of all the available resources the world over.

Inspiration comes when I illuminate the everyday people, circumstances and situations in my own realm and consider the truths that exist right around me. My writing is a creative process that “elevates the everyday rather than denigrates it,” as my husband says. My goal on this website is to share that process and what I discover.

Try-It-With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

The April Reading Challenge was to memorize something you have read that inspires you, and today is the time to tell how you did. What did you memorize? Did you complete your goal? What did you learn in the process?

My goal was to memorize The Family: A Proclamation to the World. My reason for this mental challenge to memorize was to create a mental tool for myself. I can replace negative, anxious or wandering thoughts at any time and in any place with inspiring words.

Originally I made this goal at the beginning of the year as personal gift to myself for Mother’s Day. But I could see that I was not progressing in my goal so I made it the April Reading Challenge. Like many personal goals, it is easy to set it aside our own commitments when other choices or responsibilities arise. That happened to me, especially in the last week of my goal.

So how did I do? Better than I expected—I am 95% complete with my goal. I can recite the nine paragraphs or 29 sentences of this document today with only six or seven corrections or prompts. That is far enough that I will have 100% completely memorized on Mother’s Day.

Trying to Memorize is a process. I write the document on note cards and study them one at a time. Then, when I think I know each card, I study the document as a whole and try to say it from beginning to end.

Moving from the note cards to the document was a difficult but important shift in the process. I wanted to keep the small sub-goals of memorizing individual paragraphs. I lacked confidence that I was ready to recite the whole. But once I changed to recitation rather than just memorization, I achieved more success.

When the final week of my goal collided with other reading, writing and teaching assignments, the recitation didn’t add to that stress—it minimized it.

One of those added stresses was a CT scan on my sinuses. Ironically, it was while this machine created a diagnostic image of my head that I knew my true purpose of finding inspiration in any moment was fulfilled.

Did you Try It With Me? Tell about it in a comment below. If you would rather write about it in a post on your own website, leave a link to it here or send it to me and I will publish it.

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Next week’s Try-It-With-Me Tuesday will be my 101st post! Celebrate with me May 6, when I will announce the May Reading Challenge.

Intention: n. A course of action that one intends to follow. 2. An aim that guides action; an objective.

I wanted to make blueberry muffins for the 6:45 a.m. youth religion class I teach. It was Friday and we struggled through Jeremiah and Lamentations all week. I wanted to reward their effort and acknowledge their work. I envisioned combining a spiritual feast with a home-baked one.

At 9 p.m. the night before, I decide that I have too much on my plate and try to be content with the lesson I prepared.

At 6:05 a.m., dressed and ready, I say, “There is enough time; I can still do this.”

At 6:07, I heat the oven and began doubling my favorite blueberry muffin recipe. I need to get them in by 6:15 for this to work.

At 6:12, I stress a little, stirring the blueberries into the batter. What was I thinking?

At 6:17, I am lining muffin tins with paper wrappers.

At 6:19, My family comes in for prayers while I am filling the muffin cups. My husband looks at me funny. He says, “Do you have enough time to bake them?”

At 6:20, I stick them into the oven and set the timer for 15 minutes. Perfect. 15 minutes to cook. 10 minutes to get there.

At 6:33, I load up my car and start it—minus the muffins, which are still baking.

At 6:35, the toothpick comes out gooey. Overfilled the cups. Going to take longer. I set the timer for one more minute.

At 6:36, I take the muffins out, set the hot muffin tins on two larger baking sheets and grab them to leave. I burn my thumbs in the process.

At 6:45, I am halfway to the building. Ok, only a few minutes late. I am never late, and they always are. Should work out fine.

At 6:49, I drive down the road to the building. I see a familiar minivan coming toward me. I hope they were just dropped off.

At 6:50, I pull up, and one boy gets out of his car. No one else there. I am juggling the muffins and my lesson materials. I ask him for help, and he tells me three other students were here but they left. “But I made them muffins.”

At 6:51, I open the building and turn on the lights and set the muffins down in the classroom. I can’t just teach him myself. I tell him that and then say, “Wait right here, maybe I can let them know I’m here.” I grab my cell phone to find some phone numbers, but the battery goes dead.

At 6:53, I am in my car, back on the main road, driving the short distance to the high school. I make it a block and see another student’s car coming toward me. Good, we can have class, now. I turn around and head back to the building.

At 6:54, I watch that student drive right past the nearly empty parking lot.

At 6:55, Back in the building, I tell the one original student, “We’ll wait five minutes.”

At 7:02, I hand him two muffins on a napkin and cancel class.

At 7:10, I am walking the halls of the high school’s south campus trying to bring muffins to my students. The halls are empty except for the cooks in the kitchen preapring school lunch.

Plenty of food. Just no one to eat it.

This is why I am not spontaneous.

A scripture I am working on . . .

Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

After reading about sugar overload at Women’s Health from a link on Evolving Mom and hearing about Minna’s Sugar Strike, I consciously watched and reduced my own sugar intake.

Before I go any further I must warn that the rest of this post, the poll, and the ensuing comments may not meet the standard of inspiring (in a good way) that I routinely seek in my posts.

But, today is Friday, and Friday is a dessert night in our house. I have an undeniable sweet tooth. I have learned to limit myself in different ways throughout my life, with varied results. Only after I left my parent’s home could they dedicate a whole drawer in the kitchen to all the varied flavors of Twizzlers.

In my own home, now, the inspired balance of eating some sugar but not too much, is still not easy, especially as a wife and a mother who gets cranky at 3 p.m. every afternoon and loves baking for her family.

However, setting particular days aside as dessert nights seems to help me and my family limit the indulgences (to at least three or four days a week instead of seven). Thus, I am contemplating Rice Krispies Treats or Warm Brownie Pudding Cake.

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