Hi! Welcome to Life Well Inspired!
My name is Lucille Stekl and I’m so happy you found my home here on the web.
My hubby and I have three boys and girl who call me mama. My oldest is in school but the rest are homeschooled. Life is surely full, a lot of times hard but good overall. You will mostly find biblical encouragement here, as I blog about what I am learning and discovering in my walk with the Lord, but I do post on topics of motherhood, raising boys, being a wife, herbs, health and wellness, and gardening also.
The Lord is my ultimate inspiration in everything I do. He enables me to live my life well inspired whether that be in my writing, mothering, marriage, gardening, preserving food, natural herbal medicines, or my design work. It is all for His glory.
A Little About Me...
I grew up in Northwestern New Jersey in a conservative Christian home. I was raised in church and heard the Bible after every family meal, but it was not until I had a child of my own that the Lord took my head knowledge and made it heart knowledge. My journey of faith has been a meandering wilderness and valley through personal and professional struggles encompassing motherhood marriage, friendships, and passions. God has proved faithful through it all, even when He seemed silent and I didn’t feel him near.
When my oldest two were little, in 2013, God whispered the idea of this blog to me. He even gave me the name. Over the next few years, I behaved like Gideon, constantly asking God for confirmation. He always confirmed and even to this day, even though I no longer ask, I hear whispers of confirmation through sermons, songs, videos, and things I read. What I write here is purely inspired by Him from what He is teaching me in my own walk.
I was also raised on a small hobby farm so gardening has always been a part of my life beginning as a little girl watching my parents garden to provide food for our family. Although I never fell in love with weeding as a child, it was always great fun to plan and plant an annual bed along the driveway every spring. That early discovery of a love for plants soon grew into an interest for cut flowers and the dream to have a small floral studio out of my home. A love for the greenhouse and raising plants followed and grew into garden planning and landscape design. My bigger dream was to raise a family and be at home with them.
Today, I am a wife and homeschooling mama to 4 kiddos. I still love to garden even though that looks different than I thought it would because I spend more time taking care of my family these days. Summer and fall are a busy time harvesting and preserving produce for the winter both food and herbs. I am careful to find homegrown produce when I can’t grow it myself, and I forage to make herbal preparations to compliment a healthy diet. My business, passions, talents, and hobbies are all in the plant world from growing and caring for plants to designing with plants and flowers. I am also passionate about my relationship with the Lord and enjoy studying the Bible and blogging.
Poor health was part of my wilderness journey. I battled anxiety, allergies, and hormone imbalance. God led me to healing through herbs, food and diet as well as in His word. It was a cosmic collision of my love of gardening, herbs, and my faith as God brought me to a place of full surrender to His plan. While the fragmented pieces of my passions had confused me in the past, God showed me how they all fit together and gave me a desire to help other women embrace a holistic lifestyle to recover or enhance their lives with a God-centered perspective.
What's in it for you...
Therefore, encourage
one another and
build each other up.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
All the way back in the beginning, God gave me 1 Thessalonians 5:11 as the theme verse for Life Well Inspired. That has become my purpose. My heart is to encourage women in their walk with the Lord and my prayer is that you are encouraged and lifted up from your time here.
After being discouraged in how much God was left out of mainstream holistic lifestyles and organic gardening circles, I felt God calling me to add that to my work here at Life Well Inspired. God is the ultimate source of inspiration and the creator of it all! We can safely use the herbs He created and the natural process He already set into motion while giving him the glory and keeping out eyes on Him. You will also find gardening and herbal articles here with a space dedicated to just that topic. I have a couple ebooks and an ecourse on gardening nautrally and holistically.
You will find articles about walking with the Lord, studying scripture, motherhood and marriage, as well as holistic healthy living, herbs and gardening. As a subscriber to the blog, there is an ebook library with books you can download and a free 52 week devotional email series studying God’s Goodness, plus a special gardening section.
Access the ebook library here. You’ll find the password at the bottom of every email once you have subscribed.
Discover God’s goodness through this 52 week devotional email series delivered weekly right into your email inbox.
Head on over to the gardening section and read all the plant, herb and healthy living articles. Discover life beyond organic.
My Portfolio
Professionally, my career began in high school as I attended a Technical High School for Agriculture. I was a part of FFA and competed in Landscape Design, Greenhouse Management, and Turfgrass competitions. Throughout high school, I worked in a greenhouse that grew cut roses, Agway’s plant department, and finally in a large greenhouse operation that grew annuals, perennials, mums, and poinsettias. I also started my own greenhouse business that helped pay for my college education at SUNY Cobleskill where I graduated with a degree in Plant Science focused in floriculture. I moved my greenhouse to Western New York when I got married and I have done work with floral design for weddings and special events, garden planning, design, and maintenance, as well as custom hanging baskets.
Today, B&L Botanica is a design studio where I do floral, garden, landscape and even web design work, although I am not accepting clients at this time. You will find that Gardener’s Circle ebooks and gardening materials are all branded for that business, rather than Life Well Inspired. I am just beginning to blend my love of the Lord and my love of plants, gardening, and design together for His glory. As everything in life seems to be,this is a work in progress. Here is a sample of my horticultural work.
