Not Even Embers

I love to garden.  Love the feeling that I somehow have even a small part in God's creation.  Fruit, veggies, plants, flowers.  Silk plants. (oh, wait, no part in those except the purchase).  Inasmuch as we live in the desert, my handsome hub tends to get a little overzealous with the watering and roses do NOT like overwatering.  We put in a new rose bush a few weeks ago with all kinds of promise and a week ago I went out and the stems and stalks were, well, rubbery.  Like asparagus when it has been over-steamed.   Yuck.  Multiple buds were just dying even before they opened. I tied up my precious plant and told the Hub "DO NOT WATER."  We're growing grass and other things and he can certainly water THAT stuff 'cuz the roses were plenty saturated.

So, all that being said  - three years ago, all that I thought my life would be, all the dreams that I had for myself, all that I thought God was directing me toward just, well, died.  Everything I thought was going to come to pass, any vision that I had for life was a pile of rubble.  Torched and hosed down without so much as an ember of the hope that had sustained me even through difficult days when our man-cubs and marriage were young and struggling.  This morning, as I am wont to do most days, I read the devotion from Proverbs 31 (www.proverbs31.org) and learned that I am in the company of some fairly awesome women whose dreams had died.  I was reminded that God promises to give us beauty for ashes or, in my case, for dreams that have been so torched and drowned that not even an ember remains.  (I think my dreams had  become more like charcoal - capable of being reignited but otherwise, just a lifeless lump).   More than any other day over the past many (1,069 to be exact), I had hope.  A real reminder that God has not forgotten that He gave me dreams and desires and hopes and even if I don't know what He has planned for the pile of rubble I am right now, He DOES indeed have a plan.  He STILL has a purpose.  He still moves mountains and He can and WILL take the mess that is my life and allow me to be used for HIS glory.

Back to the roses - the rubbery, overwatered, dyin' on the vine roses.  The bush is drying out and after reading this morning's encouragement, I went out to water the budding seed that hopefully will be grass and there it was.  One, beautiful, soft peachy-pink rose with the most heavenly smell ever!  Only one but it was enough.  God - the Almighty - knows how to grow roses and He CERTAINLY knows how to grow me.  I am a broken, battered, scarred woman. Just ashes but today, there was an ember.  A small warmth that I know can and will be stoked back into a flame that shines the love of Jesus.  Beauty for ashes where not even an ember could be found.
With His love, for His Glory - A2