While we were away someone cut the grass and took care of the house. However, I didn't realize how quickly our flowers and bushes grow. During the seven weeks we were away they went crazy. In fact, we had trouble walking to the front door.
I armed myself with clippers and those lopper things or whatever you call them and headed out front. My husband yelled, "what are you doing? Those bushes are beautiful. You'll kill them."
I don't think so honey. I worked for about three hours chopping and pruning and clearing a path to the front door. When he came home from golf he was amazed.
During that time of pruning, I realized how much like the bushes my own life is. How many times the Lord has put His hands on His hips and said, "oh my, I need to prune you."
As I cleared the path I exposed a small flower which had become completely hidden. And also not able to grow because it no longer received any sun light.
Just like me, I'm not able to grow either if I don't receive any "Son" light.
Ahhhhh, keep pruning Lord, in spite of my protests.
I Corinthians 3:6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.
Over the years I have developed a deep affinity for Orchids. I'm not sure why, but it might be due to the fact that they bloom for several months and then don't bloom again for another year.
This little beauty is in my office, notice the clutter behind it.
And then there's this little guy who has been sitting outside, patiently waiting to bloom again. It hasn't bloomed since last May. The flowers are larger this year and there's still one waiting to open.
But wait, what about this one? This one is growing in a small planter, hanging right outside my office window, but has no medium (bark or moss) inside. It is simply growing. The down side to this one is it requires a cup of water daily.
I do love flowers, and I just realized each of these orchids is some shade of purple.
It also occurred to me that even though each of these orchids is blooming now, each one of them takes special care. One requires water everyday, the other one a special kind of moss and the third one I "water" with ice cubes, but yet each of them is blooming and thriving.
I wonder if that's how God sees each of us, as special and different? I wonder if HE also cares for us in the same way. In other words, HE knows exactly what we need in order to make us bloom and thrive.
I wonder if I'm an orchid in God's eyes?
I have trouble sleeping in a strange bed. In fact, I'm surprised my husband can sleep at all while we are away from home. I am up and down all night long. Reading, watching TV, walking around the room. One thing I've learned, that sometimes helps is thinking about pleasant things. Once in a while, that will help me drift off to sleep. On several different nights I tried thinking about flowers. I love flowers. My husband often tells our friends, "if there's a flat surface, she thinks it requires a plant or flowers." I say what's wrong with that? Before we left for sixteen days I planted several new flowers in flower beds outside. We have an automatic sprinkler system, so I wasn't worried about the extra water they would need while I was gone. One of the things I didn't count on were all the weeds. We got home late in the afternoon, it was still light enough to walk through the yard admiring my flowers. I stopped short in my tracks. Where are all the flowers? That's right. In some cases they were hidden by all the weeds.
It was that very moment that made me think about my own life. When I'm not home to weed the flower beds, they are over run with nasty looking weeds. Isn't that the way sin is too? If you aren't constantly reading the Bible, praying and meditating "weeds" will grow in your life.
I heard my husbands voice. "What are you doing? I've been looking all over for you."
I was bent over one of the beds pulling weeds as fast as I could. "Just give me a minute, and I'll have these flower beds all shaped up."
Wouldn't it be great, if that's all we had to do? Pull a few "weeds" and everything would be "all shaped up."
I'm home now, sleeping in my own bed. My husband seems to be sleeping better too. Probably because he's not up in the middle of the night trying to figure out what I'm doing. Ahhh, home, sweet home!
We'll be spending a couple days in Ohio and Kentucky, so I've been checking the weather there recently. The weather there looks great, the 50's at night and low 80's during the day, if we were used to it. People always ask me, "how can you live in Florida, it's so hot there?" Let me tell you. I love it in Florida. I love the palm trees and the flowers. And the blue sky. I love walking outside at night and looking up at that gray sky and feeling like I can almost touch the stars that are twinkling back at me. I love the smell of orange blossoms and looking across the street at Crepe Myrtle lining the driveway. I love walking outside and being able to work in my flower bed in December while wearing shorts. That is the trade off. In the summer it is a little warmer here, but I don't have to shovel snow. I don't have to prepare the house for winter. Wash all the screens and replace them with storm windows every fall. I don't have to clean the lawn mower and have it serviced to "put away for the season". I don't have to stay inside because it's just too cold, or no one has plowed the driveway yet, so we couldn't get the car out of the garage if we wanted to.
This summer has been wonderful. There have only been a couple days that my husband couldn't play golf. That's the way I rate the weather here in Florida. If it's too hot he only plays 9 holes.
I have clothes stacked on the bed in the guest room and my husband walked past the door, checking on me. "What's all that?" he pointed.
"Let me tell you." I said proudly pointing. "These are the clothes I'm wearing on the way, and this pile is the one to wear after we arrive."
He shook his head. "Honey, it's still September."
I nodded, "I know that."
He scratched his head as he walked out of the room. "Do you really think you need gloves, tennis shoes, socks and a coat?"
