What a difference a year can make. Better yet, what a difference waiting on God can make! Being human, I don't always love those moments when you don't realize you're being taught a life lesson until the lesson is revealed. (Let the church say... Amen!) However, there are some lessons that are so filled with awe that you have to appreciate the revelation when it comes. Was this experience life-changing? Well... in the Body they would say – that this believer's small heart grew three sizes that day. (It's okay to laugh.) For those of you who may not be aware, I started gardening Spring of 2019. When we were looking for a home, part of prayer was for God to give us a sizeable yard so I could start growing my own food. It was a part of a lifestyle change that I was going make. So I thought. Most of my influence was simple curiosity with a whole lot of imagination. The long and short of it all is I became a mad scientist in my own backyard. I bought all kinds of seedlings, and if it originated out of the ground I tried to regrow it. And I was on a roll! Then the work kicked in. The weather changed which changed the amount of monitoring the garden required. Then the varmints showed up. I never wanted to destroy living creatures as bad as I did last summer. Then the bugs, worms, bacteria, mold, you name it; it was more than likely on the how to kill list. But the worst of them all were... That's right! The squirrels. Whatever they didn't try to eat they uprooted with their constant need to dig. We are sitting on over half an acre. Why my garden?! Now, every year at work we receive a baby poinsettia from a coworker as gift. While nurturing this little fella through the holiday season I learned that these plants can actually live well beyond the holidays and can be permanently planted in the ground. Now this was a shock to this city girl gone southern. Poinsettias had their own heaven because they always disappeared off the planet after Christmas passed. People and stores tossed them like used tissue. Curiosity immediately took over. Once the holiday was over, I re-potted the little guy and waited. He stayed outside with all the others and for a while everything was fine. He was growing nicely. Kind of like a house plant. By June it was obvious he needed a larger pot. So, I transferred him like a good gardener. Then the trouble began. Not only were we battling one of the driest summers I've ever had in Florida, but the squirrels went squirrely with the heat. Every morning there were new holes in the pot. Then if it had dried out enough it would get knocked over by their narrow escape from our dog. Well, eventually the constant knocking over resulted in a break... and my disappointment. The caring of the garden was taking a toll. It was one thing to have to water several times a day (and yes I do work). It was a different battle with the squirrels' vandalism. Yes, I said that. And now after all of that hard work, I have a lopsided tree. Who wants to put a lopsided tree in the ground. Certainly not me! Well, my honey being the great motivator that he is convinced me to do what I have been doing best, try to get the broken limb to grow roots. (Yeah right! It's real bush at this point.) But I did it to make him feel better. I left it in a vase of water in the kitchen window for months. Yup! Months. I hated to look at it and I hated to water the lopsided bush it came from. Then it happened. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to clear the kitchen window sill of "attempts". I noticed as I was pouring the water out of the vase that the few leaves that had been on this limb were still green and strong. This made me look down into the murky water in the vase. I pulled the limb out and there they were. ROOTS! You would have thought it was Christmas day all over again! I ran outside to see if I had a pot for it, and sure enough the one it originally broken off from was available. (My honey had yet again convinced me to re-pot Ole Loppy because it was still thriving... sideways.) So, I planted this limb with pride. I had all kinds of future plans for this newborn bush. Jokingly, I turned to apologize to it's parent, Ole Loppy and that's when I saw the next surprise. Where the branch had broken off there was a new branch shooting out of it. Have you ever felt God laughing at you? Then you can relate to what I felt at that very moment. "You thought it was trash." I cannot tell a lie. I wanted to throw it out every time I looked at it. "You thought the limb was actually dead." I turned back to my renewed limb feeling some form of embarrassment as if it knew what I had been thinking all these months. All I could whisper was, "Wow Daddy. You are so amazing." Here it is folks. What I thought was ruined was not. What I thought was dead was not. I simply placed my value in the wrong area of a thing. God used my husband to keep me caring for these things I believed no longer had value. I thought it was over. Yet, one was simply dormant, and the other needed time to heal itself and correct the damage. Little did I know that it was designed to do so... over time. So, even though I thought I had lost something, I gained two things... through time. Yes, they were damaged from their original state. However, they became a double blessing... over time. Catching the theme here? Ole Loppy will have to be renamed one day soon and who will be the wiser of how the other came into existence? God is simply amazing in His original design of things. If we could just allow Him take the broken, dormant, and dead-like things in our lives more often, just think of how much more we would have... in His time. I hope this little life lesson of mine has blessed your new year views a little more today. Warmest regards, Bird
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorJust a little birdy and fish about the Father's business. Helping to better the world one blog at a time. Categories
All
Archives
May 2020
|