You Will Bloom More Than Once

Image credit: Pixabay.com (2016), CC0/PD[/caption] Autumn and Natalie Merchant are similar. I get all sentimental, sad and discontent when Natalie Merchant enticingly sings,

“Theeeese are days you’ll remember Never before and never since I promise Will the whole world be warm as this …”

It makes me miss childhood, high school, college, engagement, young adulthood, the toddler years, these years. It makes me prematurely miss today and tomorrow. Fall feels the same way at times. Goodbye summer. Goodbye warmth. It was fun while it lasted. But now, eternal winter is around the corner and you can never return to this glory. Well, thankfully, those are mostly lies. You and I will have more than four seasons in our lives. Life will bloom more than once. This stage is ending but another one will come. God’s people are changing from glory to glory. This week I ran into an old neighbor, Stacy, who started out as a stay-at-home mom in the tiniest little house. She was so wonderfully homey – gave kind times-out to her kids, had little chore charts on the wall, made the house look like Pottery Barn even though they were surely on a shoestring budget. Life was sweet. Then I moved and lost touch. Years later, we saw each other at the park, and I discovered that this amazing little homebody was now mobilizing overseas women who were in danger of abuse to relocate to the states. Fascinating and powerful! Then years lapsed again and I saw her at a baseball game. Something had shifted in her life and she was now doing everything she could to support her own children’s dreams. Amazing how different and beautiful each of the seasons in her life presented themselves!

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh, blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)

He gave her children -- she flourished. Her time at home was diminished and an international flower sprouted. That bud faded and a new system of support was given. Same with me and you, probably, if we look. I like to think of the projects and phases that I’m in as a painting or sketch that I offer to the Lord. Just like our kids may have given us a craft, we offer our beautiful work to the Lord. He puts it up on the refrigerator for a while and then takes it down to put up a shopping list. Surely the work that we did still brings tears of joy to His eyes, just as the old pictures of my kids’ preschool work does to me. God knows what He is doing in our lives. What is he doing in your life? Do you have seeds of change? Sometimes there is a need to mourn when one season ends. It can be hard to start another. New routines, new faces, new feelings. Perhaps awkwardness and confusion. But keep faith, daughter. God is at work. You are in his hands. His plan is to prosper you -- even at the other side of death. You will bloom again.

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. “ (Jeremiah 29:11)