When life brings you nettles

Imagine someone bought you a bunch of flowers, nicely wrapped in pretty paper with a big bow, and when you unwrapped them, you found a bunch of nettles and stung your fingers... :( You wouldn't be very happy, would you?

In many ways, this last week has been the equivalent of receiving a bunch of nettles as a gift. It's been fraught and tiring and full of *worry-potential*, trying to juggle work, family, grandchildren, my Mum who is in hospital and is likely to be in some kind of rehabilitation for weeks to come until she's mobile again. Plus, on top of all this, trying to keep a home, eat well, do the shopping and just generally remember a hundred and one things at any one time. Nettles...

But, I learned a great lesson about nettles this week, after my eldest Grandson and I had a "discover and learn" day on Saturday. We harvested a good crop of nettles from behind the house, and turned them from nasty and stingy to really rather lovely! We made nettle soup which was delicious, and I made some nettle oil for my youngest Grandson's eczema. We had fresh nettle tea, and I went to a local delicatessen and bought some Cornish Yarg cheese, which is wrapped in...yes, you guessed it...nettles!

The point of this post is that yes, life often does bring us nettles, but that which seems to be nasty, when offered up to God and united with Christ, can be made lovely. So, if life brings you nettles, don't dump them in the bin, make them into a bouquet for our Lord.

Here are some of the nice things that I made out of  nettles!