When my grandmother, Bertha, married her sweetheart, William, she moved from a town where she’d lived her whole life to his ranch in the country.  They had a new little home filled with furniture from her in-laws.  Bertha didn’t have much of a dowry so most of the drawers of the new furniture lay empty.  She was far from friends and family and she must have been a little lonely as William went to work in the fields each morning. 

Every day after her own work was in order, she left the house and wandered through the creek bottom, the meadows and fields.  As she walked she looked for treasures.  She found and filled her pockets with beautiful rocks and arrowheads.  These she brought home and placed in her empty drawers.

As the years went by and children came, I’m sure the drawers were filled with the necessities of family life, but she never gave up the little treasures she found in her first days out at the ranch.  Along with those bits and pieces, she found she discovered a love for her new home.  When she shared this story with my family she was in her eighties, but she expressed a deep longing for the ranch which was lost years later after my grandfather’s death. 

I first heard this story as a young girl at my grandmother’s feet, but it had no impact until I heard it again as a woman in a new place struggling to adjust to my surroundings.  For the first time, I saw the gentle lessons taught in her story.  I saw then that grandma didn’t run out and fill the emptiness in her drawers with things she couldn’t afford.  She didn’t spend time longing for what was left behind.  She started where she was, explored her new life and found treasures all around her, including a love for where life had placed her.

These are lessons we can all learn from, especially today.  There are so many changes in people’s lives these days.  Things we thought were permanent now fade before our eyes.  Security that felt so sure, so safe is no longer there.  We are forced to learn new skills and strike out on new paths.  Economic pressures can be especially trying, but like grandma we can start where we are, explore our lives to find treasures all around us and in the process find a love for where life has placed us. 

One of the treasures I have found in difficult economic times has been the opportunity to learn new skills.  When my husband started his career and we had our first child, we determined that I would stay home.  I studied and asked questions to discover ways to stretch our dollars.  Cooking from scratch was at the top of the list, and with such thrifty living through the years, I’ve made everything from yogurt, to all kinds of breads, to mozzarella, to laundry detergent.  If it can be made at home I’ve probably tried it.  I have often reflected on the things I would never have learned to do if I could have always paid for those things to be done for me.  More often than not, this skill has given me opportunities to show my love for my family.  After all, as the old proverb says “Work is love made visible.”  Now cooking and enjoying it together is simply part of what we do in our family.  It has added richness to our lives that money cannot buy.

I experienced that richness as a child when my mother did for me things that were born out of economic necessity, things that made me feel treasured.  My mother was and still is an incredible seamstress.  I often went to her with desires for a new dress.  I really wanted the store-bought one, but we could rarely afford what I wanted.  I can still see her carefully drawing a picture of the dress I wanted in ZCMI.  Together we went to the fabric store and found fabric and a pattern that closely matched the dress we’d looked at in the store.  Then came the weeks of anticipation as the dress took shape.  Finally it was ready and the warm, newly pressed fabric flowed over my head and swirled around me, a dress more wonderful than any found in a store.  Now when my own girls pull that dress out of the cedar chest and try it on, I am again reminded of how my mother clothed me with her skill and her love. 

Skills learned out of necessity are a great treasure, but one that I value even more is that of knowing how much our Father in Heaven cares and knows about each of us.  I remember a day when a friend showed up at our door holding a box containing jugs of milk and some vegetables.  She explained that she had been somewhere and they had been giving these items away.  She thought maybe I could use them.  How could she know that we were out of milk and money?  She didn’t, but a loving Father knew.  Things like this have happened too many times for me not to know that He watches over us and cares about our needs.