Last summer, I posted a story here about a pruning (a horticultural pruning and a heart one) I had experienced. (Go ahead, read the recap...I'll wait.) Today, after a year, here's what those same plants look like:
Beautiful, right? Healthy looking, right? Well, except for the fact that all year, I've had to live with the full knowledge that there wouldn't be any flowers. The fragrance that graces me every summer would be absent. Leaves - plenty. Growth - much. However, plumerias, once pruned, go through a year (sometimes up to five) without flowering - as if the beauty is so great - it has to store up energy to produce it.
So, this afternoon, while contemplating life's latest curve ball, I walked outside and a fragrance that I know only in the quiet places of my heart that reminds me of Hawaii-home, struck me in the face as I walked by my plumeria tree.
I looked and there, in the depth of the tree, on only one branch, was a bloom...and the remnant of two others, slightly tattered and not quite perfect, that had fallen to the ground. But it was the same familiar fragrance that nearly brought me to tears as the analogy came. It was as if it was trying to say to my heart - "I will be beautiful again. You may have to look hard to find it, and it might not look like you think it should, but it's here." Hope.
You see, beauty does come again and again in the form of hope. From the ugly places we find ourselves, to the beauty that will rise... no matter how it's packaged... the fragrance of hope remains unchanged. Although the result might not turn out the way I think it should or the ball curve the way I want it to, if I'm careful to watch for it and not judge the packaging, life will be beautiful again. Pruning does that to you, you know.
1 comment:
You rock my world with your discernment and insight. Awesome stuff this!!!! You have my heart.
Post a Comment