Bloom

I have always loved flowers. From childhood, I have been enchanted with watching a flower start to bud and waiting anxiously for it to bloom into what it was made and created to be. Not to mention the fact that flowers are just beautiful and have a way of bringing joy and brightening a room just by being in it. Even now, as an adult, when one of the flowering plants in my yard blooms, I get excited to see the new bloom and watch it bring beauty to this world.

For me, flower blooms have become a symbol of hope, especially those on the Rose of Sharon bush. Back when I was in high school, Nashville experienced a pretty bad drought. I don't remember why, but my family had gone to Lowes to get something and I, enjoying flowers, wandered through the garden department. There on the clearance rack was a small and mostly dead plant, but something about it called to me, and at the cost of $1 it went home with me. I planted it and hoped it would survive believing that there was something still alive there to be saved. A year later when the flourishing plant bloomed, I found out that it was a Rose of Sharon. Over the years, that one nearly dead bush grew and actually split into multiple bushes. While the plant in and of itself is nothing spectacular, its blooms came to be a symbol for me, that even in a drought, there is still life and still hope. Sharing how much a simple little plant meant to me with my family probably would have been a good choice, but I never thought about it. Only when I was in college, did it come up because my dad unknowingly and out of a misunderstanding trimmed my plant back to a stump. Had I not been diagnosed with the life-changing chronic medical condition of Type 1 Diabetes and faced a near death experience with that only weeks earlier, I might have handled it better, but I was heartbroken. In a time where my hope had dried up, a symbol of hope, my symbol of hope was destroyed. But, that resilient little plant did not give up. That summer it bloomed again. It may have only been one, but it was there to remind me that if it could survive, so could I. A few years later my family moved, and as much as I wanted to take the whole bush with me, there was no way. It was too big. My aunt and dad kindly took clippings off of it to root and plant at the new house. We ended up with 2 different plants. One bloomed the summer after we moved, and the other has been quietly growing. It finally bloomed last week, a big beautiful white flower. It was so lovely.

I don't know about you, but for me this season of life has felt in ways like a desert. I feel like there have been places of my life that God has promised me a bloom is coming soon, but I still don't see it. There are also places that I have watched as all of my friends have bloomed and stepped into their way of bringing beauty in the world, and I feel like I am still waiting. Waiting is hard and, frankly, no fun. But, I was reminded last week watching that flower slowly grow and then beautifully bloom, that our lives are like that too. In the places of my life that feel dead, there is a bloom developing. It may just take longer, but that makes it no less significant or beautiful. I choose to trust and believe that in what looks like a drought, there is still something growing. I choose to hold to hope.