A beautiful sign

I believe in signs. I also believe that they are around us all of the time, trying to guide our way, but we are often too busy or distracted by the noise of the world to notice.

Rob borrowed a tiller from our neighbor, and worked on preparing the ground for me Wednesday night. (Unfortunately, it broke midway through the process, bad both because it's not ours, and we weren't finished).

So, as I've been hoeing like a madwoman trying to get out the bits of grass and weeds and prepare the garden for planting, I've been thinking about Grandma and Grandpa a lot and appreciating all of the hard work gardening really is. Last night, I hoed that part you see that Rob was able to finish and de-weeded as much as possible, and planted a row of asparagus. Ironically, the row is about as straight as the rows I used to crochet after Grandma taught me. She was genuinely astounded when I showed her what I'd completed on my first afghan—not at my great progress, but that I had kept going and not ripped it out and started over based on my veering edges. Hers, of course, were always perfectly straight.

I'm sorry Liz but I cannot say the word afghan without thinking of the time back in the mid 90's when you called it an Afghanistan. I love you my favorite Puerta Rican English-as-a-second-language-friend.

Anyhoo, after the row was planted, the boys went off to fight play again, and I was alone. That's when I discovered this, just laying there right on top of the ground in the middle of the garden:

A perfect, beautiful arrowhead, sent straight to me from my grandparents. I have absolutely no doubt about this. They have cigar boxes filled with all of the arrowheads they found over their years of gardening, and in all of my years spent there, I have never found a perfect one like this. It is so amazing to me to hold something in my hand that was made hundreds of years ago, by people living their lives so differently than we live ours now.

A few years ago, on the beach, another sign was sent. My mom, sister and I had gone to Florida to celebrate my Mom's 60th birthday, and my sister and I were walking on the beach, looking for sanddollars. For some reason, I was thinking about Grandma and urged her in my mind to send us a sanddollar. Heather and I picked up over 50 sanddollars in the next hour. It was awesome.

I find it very comforting to know that not only are God and His hosts of angels watching over us, but also our loved ones who have gone before us.