It's all coming up out there.
The garden is awake and stetching, right through deep layers of leaf litter,
pushing aside winter blankets of muck carried by now-vanished snow drifts.
pushing aside winter blankets of muck carried by now-vanished snow drifts.
Every year I'm amazed that it all comes back to life.
As if there never was an icy glaze on every branch -
every flower bed a blank slate with only dead twigs to show where
life had once flourished.
Bundled, I browsed the gardens in January and prepared to mourn in May.
And then ... there they were -
Everyday Miracles, scattered in the dirt of the my own backyard.
Side Note:
Moms of young adults / late teens talk. Boy do we talk! And we laugh, grieve, rejoice, fret, and pray. Repeat. Too often we get stuck on fret part of that cycle. Or we pitch a tent and camp in grief. Once a sweet mom pal said to me, "I know he's not following the Lord. After all that's gone on - he can't belong to Him." Of course this is our most gripping fear. That the children we reared to love God -
the ones whose sweet voices wobbled along with ours on 'Come Thou Fount', the tots who quoted psalms to the beat of a Playskool hammer, the tiny ladies who allowed imaginary tea to be served only after a grateful prayer to Jesus - that these might emerge into young adulthood with their faces set against the Father.
As we browse the gardens of our children's lives in mid-winter, whenever that might occur, let's encourage each other not to rush to judgement. Don't mourn, and certainly do not lean into grieving with some other mother over what has not been proven! What seems to be dead in our sons and daughters may only be asleep, waiting for the right time to be called back by the Spirit. Let's be parent-gardeners who walk with hope and faith in what the Master will do, putting our trust in Him and not in any work of our own hands. Because friends, He alone is faithful and He will do it.
"Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind their wandering hearts to thee. " R. Robinson
Verses here.
Come Thou Fount here and here and the modern hymn story here.
