Blooming Women
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  • About Blooming Women
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  • Happy Birthday, Blooming Women! One Year Today!
  • Blog—Maniacal Musings—Becky Lyn Rickman, Managing Editor
  • Blog—Jessica's Journey—Jessica VanVactor, Guest Contributor
  • Blog—My Armenia—Carol Rickman's Blog
  • Dealing with miscarriage
  • My Story
  • Circles
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Being Single
  • 5 Stages of divorce recovery
  • The Circus is in Town
  • (You're covered with) The Fingerprints of God
  • Thunder Roared and Love Soared
  • A Period Piece
  • A sneak preview of the Gertie sequel!
  • Six Steps to Cultivate your Femininity in the Business World
  • Chore Zoning or Don't try this at home!
  • The 50 with Meredith Morse—Opera Singer
  • The 50 with Jessica VanVactor
  • Memorizing Joy
  • AT LAST! My interview with Shan White, Life Coach for women in transition
  • Questions and statements we don't care if we never, ever get asked or told again (am I right, girls?)
  • The Date
  • Moonshadow's Spirit
  • Broken Writer + Hypnotherapy = Amazing Trips
  • The "R" Word
  • The 50 with Carol Shepherd Rickman
  • Triumph During Transitions
  • A Kentucky Afternoon
  • Mothers
  • 10 things chemo taught me
  • What if . . .
  • Forgiveness—A poem
  • Mantegories (n. from the Latin; man+categories)
  • Insomnia 101
  • Blooming Bud Interview: Sierra
  • Masterful Mindsets
  • It's in the bag!
  • Important lessons for children: Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can
  • Nursery rhymes, and times, and slimes, and grimes, and crimes
  • Things I learned as a single mom
  • Sadie's Soapbox: Dating
  • The Dress
  • 8 Things That Have Surprised Me About Having a Large Family
  • The gift of longing
  • The Semicolon Project
  • Most embarrassing moments—culinary edition
  • MilitaReality—a brat's perspective
  • About those elusive wisps of thought
  • Being there
  • The Giving Mom
  • How I still haven't learned to keep my smart mouth shut!
  • If you give a mom a cookie . . .
  • Cacti and Geraniums
  • The Three Gardeners
  • Beauty is as beauty does
  • Words for Sabra
  • Arm scratching in Baltimore
  • Pornography didn't kill our love and friendship . . . I did . . . and how we got it back
  • Hardening off our little bloomers
  • The Wonderful, Magical Women of Blooming Television
  • Shake it like a Polaroid picture!
  • 25 Date Nights (that aren't dinner and a movie)
  • Hills Like White Elephants
  • Maryland Beaten Biscuits
  • The night we thought the house was exploding
  • A mysterious case of goosebumps or "What is that on the wall?"
  • Militareality—Real stories of military wives
  • Finding my metal in wood
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Chariot of Fire
  • Secret gifts of love
  • The best prank I ever pulled was . . .
  • Connie
  • Dating and other hazards
  • Favorite childhood memories
  • When God speaks . . .
  • Zanie gets into another sticky situation
  • No-see-ums: A little useful information
  • I love my kids, but . . .
  • Meg's poem
  • Another blooming bud interview
  • Some of my favorite herbal recipes are . . .
  • I love my cat, but . . .
  • I love all creatures, but . . .
  • The thing all girls and women must see and know . . .
  • The Great Chicken Debacle
  • The Powerful Influence of Brothers
  • How I feel about blooming is . . .
  • Sometimes grandma is up—other times she is simply upside-down
  • Anyone out there as anxious as I am?
  • Some of my funniest childhood memories are . . .
  • You might be addicted to Harry Potter if . . .
  • This month's survey:
  • Another Blooming Bud interview
  • The most valuable life lesson I've learned is . . .
  • The greatest blessing to come out of the most painful thing I ever experienced was . . .
  • The most powerful influence on my life is . . .
  • The thing that could have broken our family, but didn't was . . .
  • The funniest thing that ever happened to me was . . .
  • The time my dad really surprised me was when . . .
  • NEW FEATURE: Interviews with Blooming Buds
  • ANOTHER NEW FEATURE: A survey
  • The most valuable life lesson I've ever learned is . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • One of the most fun days I ever had was . . .
  • The most scared I've ever been was when . . .
  • The people who have been the biggest influence on me are . . .
  • I like to relax by . . .
  • The best way to do . . .
  • My most embarrassing moment was when . . .
  • The most fun I ever had was when . . .
  • When I grow up, I want to be . . .
  • What really puzzles me is . . .
  • The most amazing bargain I ever found was . . .
  • Those annoying things kids do and what they mean
  • My shameless self-promotion
  • The thing about getting older is . . .

losing connie

By Hannah Sharpe, Guest Contributor
A pivotal moment of faith from my younger days. I wrote it in my 14th summer.
Picture
I had saved up all summer for Connie. She was my fifty-dollar, hand-fed cockatiel. A summer of flipping hamburgers had earned me the money, and the responsibility to get a pet of my own. 


We had to keep her flight feathers clipped, so she wouldn't fly away; and a cuttlebone in her cage so her beak didn't get too long; and a number of other things to keep her safe.


We had just finished clipping her flight feathers, and we were going to take her outside for some fresh air. My mom offered to take her out on her shoulder while she worked in the garden. It was a pleasant, warm day with a delightful breeze that a bird native to Australia might enjoy, so I let her. We had taken her out for walks before and knew she could be trusted not to fly away, especially since we had just trimmed her ticket to freedom.


She was so happy to get out and stretch her long, gray and white wings, and to let her pale, yellow crest blow in the soft, warm breeze. I smelled the sun-ripened vegetables in the garden, and thought of the salad we would have for dinner tonight. We always had a garden fresh salad this time of year, filled with all kinds of green, leafy lettuce, juicy, red tomatoes that melt in your mouth, crisp, flavorful cucumbers, carrots sliced with love, and some crunchy, green broccoli, all topped with my mom's famous celery seed dressing. Another breeze blew, waking me up from my blissful daydream. I looked out and saw my mom rushing toward the house and a bird flying towards the field in our backyard.


My mom was acting like she had just burned the house down. She kept telling me how sorry she was and I had to calm her down and tell her it was alright and that we would find Connie. All the while, I was trying to convince myself of the thing I sounded so sure about. 


We went out into the tick-infested field and searched out there for awhile, calling her name in hopes that she would call back in her sweet, soft tweet, when we had a feeling we might not be as lucky in our hunt as we had hoped. 


We stopped and knelt, right in the middle of that tick-infested field, checking the ground before doing so, and prayed. After, we stood up and headed back to the now quiet house, without the treasure we had searched so long for. 


Suddenly, we heard Samantha, our cat, meow a few feet away from us. Then we heard a noise that made our hearts burst with rapture. We ran towards the place our cat had sounded the alarm and there was Connie, my fifty-dollar, but worth every penny, hand-fed cockatiel.


God had answered our prayers in the most miraculous way possible and that night, at family prayer, we made sure to thank Him for his love.




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