Ecclesiastes 11:1
Several years ago, I sold a home I loved. My children grew up in this home and through the years our flowerbeds boasted drifts of color, and the vegetables and fruits I planted and nurtured were large and plentiful. Deep violet colored clematis curled around the gracious front porch, and in the summer the blueberries and raspberries were constantly begging to be picked. My kids played in the shade of a tee-pee made with scarlet runner beans, and my youngest daughter made “gold” bars from the wood shavings left over from our firewood. My love of dahlias started there, and as my passion for them grew, the rows of vegetables I planted curiously shrank.
When it was necessary to sell and move on, my heart could hardly endure the change and I became deeply depressed. I longed for not only the beauty and comfort our home had provided, but for the young laughter of my children that had filled it for so many years. My youngest was now entering college and changes in my life required me to sell. My neighbors asked if they could have certain plants in my garden, but feeling like I had sold the landscaping too, I sadly shook my head, ‘No’. *
However, I did dig up a few suckers from around our very prolific lilac bush and planted them in my mother’s garden until I had a home once more. It was to be a small reminder of a beautiful era. The lilac starts sprouted a few small branches and leaves in my mother’s shadow-filled back yard, but produced no flowers. Three years ago, my husband and I built a new home in a community where the yards were small and the covenants were large. My ability to plant what I wanted and where I wanted to place it was significantly stymied. I longed to make my little flower beds welcoming and colorful, and my mother reminded me of the little lilac bush still trying to grow in her garden.
I planted it in a sunny spot in the back yard of our new home and waited for it to bloom. Nothing happened. I covered its roots in compost, fed it, checked its PH and still no blooms. I even moved it to a new spot, but it remained small and non-productive. Then, in desperation, I planted another small lilac right beside it, hoping its pollen would spark a reminder of what lilac flowers look like. It has been three years and there is not even a hint of a flower. The branches are getting bigger and fuller by the day, but there will be no flowers again this year. However, the one-year old little lilac bush beside it, with its spindly branches and sparse leaves, has pleasantly provided several blessed clusters of deeply scented lilacs.
I have decided that I am giving my old little lilac bush one more spring to show me a flower. If it does not produce, I am moving it on, as I have done. Sometime things cannot be recreated or restored. Sometimes it is important to remember when we cast our bread upon the waters, it will come back, but it will be changed. The water will expand it and it will be larger, then it will drift away in little pieces sharing its nutrition to others. The lessons I have learned from moving on have been painful, but so rich and so profound, that I will never be the same. As we are sharing God’s lessons in our own lives, we are using His bountiful bread to feed others. Sometimes it’s the hardest thing in the world to cast our bread in the first place, and waiting for those “many days” before it is returned is often agony. Thankfully, the promised blessings will come and they will be abundant.
My grandchildren’s laughter now occasionally rings throughout my home, and my flowerbeds are filling up once more. I have blueberries ripening, tomatoes setting, and I am still strategizing where to plant a scarlet runner tee-pee for my grandchildren when they come for a visit.
* Little did I know that a man without legs had purchased my home and knowing he would not be able to tend my high-maintenance landscaping, he had it all bulldozed and covered in gravel. He sold it a year later and moved on as well.
