🔒 Amy Uncut- First Fruits

Hey there, I hope you're doing well. I am coming on today. It is an Amy uncut and I have an uncut message, but it has nothing to do with health, unless you wanted to like kind of zoom out and call it financial health. But I have had something that has just kind of been bubbling inside of me and I don't really have anywhere to put it, and so I thought I would put it out and just share this with you. I know many of you are involved in your church and if you happen to be involved in a place where you talk about tithing or giving to the community, I'm just going to share this story and feel free to borrow it if you want. So, as you know, I live in the Houston area, which is generally a pretty tropical area, not necessarily this last year, when we just had horrific droughts, and we have had some pretty bad freezes the last couple years. In 2022, I think it was maybe 2021, we had I mean, they call it, I think, like freeze again or snow. We didn't really have snow, but it was cold here, like the grid in Texas was failing, it was a whole thing and people lost power and houses were cold and there were deaths and it was like our city was not equipped to do that. And I know at least one of you is in Canada and you're probably chuckling because that's probably normal for you, but we don't have that Like and we don't have the capability of dealing with that. Anyway, so one of the things that we have in this tropical tropical area is tropical plants. So we had some palm trees and then I had a citrus tree that I had gotten at Costco and nurse that along and I loved that tree. Like I babied it so much and my family made so much fun of me because, like I would do things like when I made sweet potatoes or beets in my Instapod I would go put that water back into, like I would pour that onto my lemon trees and I'm telling you my lemons were as big as grapefruits. I loved that tree Well, that lemon and it was not really a tree, it was more the bush size. That bush did not make it and it was so it was so sad for me, so I took that out. Now my mother-in-law lives in the Dallas area and Dallas gets very hot. It is a bit more dry and it does get cooler in the or colder in the winter, but she will move her lemon tree in and out. She has this amazing green thumb. Like she has plants everywhere and she loves orchids and so she'll joke that she puts her orchids in timeout when they're not blooming and so she'll put them somewhere else and she keeps these things alive. Like I've been married for 26 years and she's kept these things alive. I mean, she's just incredible. So one of the things that she did with her lemon tree that she would pull out during the summer and let it bloom and then bring it back in and baby it up and rinse and repeat is she, like I guess you call it propagated it. I don't even know how she did this. So she took like some new growth one year and put a little root stimulator or something like that and then put it in. I don't know, I don't know if she put it in dirt, I don't know if she put it in water, I don't know. I don't know what she did because, ps, I do not have a green thumb. Like that's another reason that I loved this lemon tree so much is. I kept it alive. So she created. She took like this one little bitty baby limb from her lemon tree and she created and grew this new lemon tree from it, and she did that with two of them. Actually, she tried several of them and only two took. So my husband was up visiting his folks and he came home with this little bitty baby like lemon tree that obviously had no lemons and the the stalk, like the main stock, was like as thick as my pinky. I mean, it was just so itty bitty baby. So we we took, we were very careful with it and we tried to kind of integrate it into the really hot weather that we have here and the humidity and it got super stressed out and leaves fell down, but we kept it alive and then it started coming back and it was very happy. And so that year we kept it in a pot and we moved it inside and outside and did the whole thing that she did in the Dallas area. Well, then the next season came around and it was time to plant this thing. So we planted it and we have gotten some lemons off of it. So last year I didn't get any lemons because I think it was like still growing it. Oh, and then and then this past I don't know winter, we were getting some big freezes again. So I went out there and I was like, on operation, save the lemon tree. You guys, I like got out there with bubble wrap and wrapped the trunk and then I was like putting, I mean I put sheets and blankets, I mean I covered this thing up like you would not believe, and, lo and behold, my lemon tree did not die. I was so excited. So this year in January February is kind of when it starts to bloom more, maybe more like February, march, anyway so it starts blooming and I have gotten 18 lemons off of this tree and they are big. They're like the sizes of oranges, not grapefruits, but a good oranges, and it has been so fun to see this thing coming to fruition for a lot and no pen intended. What I really wanna do is I and it, like they're finally ripening, like I'm getting yellow lemons, and what I really wanted to do was take the very first lemon that came off that tree and give it back to my mother-in-law as a thank you. And it reminded me of this needs to be my heart posture when it comes to giving back. We are intentional about giving back and tithing, but sometimes we look at it more of like, oh, this is kind of what we need to do and we don't really have like this excited heart to do that and I just think about like how many lemons, like beautiful, wonderful lemons, not like in the other sense, but like how many lemons has God given me that I just will give some of them back, because I feel like it's supposed to, rather than the joy and the anticipation of giving that back like I want to, with my mother-in-law so she is not getting my first fruits, because I did have some ripen up and I wanted to use them. But we are going to go visit her for a couple days over Thanksgiving and you can bet that I am bringing some of these lemons to my mother-in-law, who basically created this lemon tree. I mean, I know she didn't really, but she kind of did so anyway something to chew on. Like I said, it's not really health, like physical, mental, spiritual health. I guess it's somewhat spiritual, somewhat financial. But feel free to take that example if you need to, because I think it's just a great reminder for me to be excited to give the fruit and the blessings that God has given us back to him. That is all. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving week. Or, if you are in the States and I will talk to you soon. Bye-bye.