Last summer I did something really dumb. I went up north to the family cabin for five glorious days out of the summer desert heat and although I gave the plants a good watering before I left, I neglected to provide additional water for my pot of mini-roses. When I descended from the mountain into high summer the pot contained brown sticks and soil littered with brown leaves. I cannot tell you have sad and pissed off I was at my stupidity for I had loved and babied the pot of mini-bushes for almost two years.
My normal tendency when I've done something resulting in feeling sad and stupid, and where a remedy does not seem available is to get rid of the evidence so to not be reminded of being sad and dumb. I thought seriously of throwing away the pot, but since I couldn't bring myself to throw away a good pot, I began to pick through the wreckage. Hidden midst the dead stalks was one with a tiny bit of green: such a tiny bit of green I thought I might be imagining it, but I left it intact and watered.
For weeks my pot with one tiny semi-green stalk looked sad and lonely but as it's my optimistic nature to encourage life, I continued watering, gave it some Miracle Grow and moved the pot about hoping to give it the right amount amount of sun and not have it's tiny life snuffed out by our desert summer sun. The itty-bitty stalk hung in there and began to show a bit more green. Ah-ha! I wasn't hallucinating.
Some mornings, actually most mornings, I'd hopefully peer into the pot looking for signs of life and one blessed day I saw tiny fuzzy leaf buds: life was reappearing! Thank you, thank you, thank you I whispered to the small plant. I continued to nurture and nourish the tiny life.
Today, what had been just the merest possibility of new life, is robust and blooming. Not only has the plant come back to life, it has more life than before: it's spreading new branches and bright green leaves cover almost half the space in the pot. Not only is the bush life larger than I ever believed possible, the blooms are literally twice the size they were last year: they are tea roses and not mini-roses!
The disaster of the pot of mini-rose bushes occurred during a time of my living that was extremely challenging: a great many changes had happened suddenly and clustered together: a lot of what I had personally loved and found comforting was no longer a part of my life. It would have been easy to throw away the pot of apparently dead plants as simply another 'tragedy.'
However, I have been taught all my life, and happen to believe, that my actions speak more loudly than any words I might jabber: if I believe God, who loves me and therefore desires the fullness of life for me, ceaselessly sends new life, then, no what outer circumstances might indicate, it is up to me to water whatever bit of green I might discover - even when it appears that I might be hallucinating !
Again I think of Isaiah who prophesied during a time when the promised Messiah appeared to be a cosmic joke. Yet, there he was, watering the faith of the people saying: "See. I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up: do you not see it? I a making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland." Isaiah 43:19
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