It’s not often that my plants speak to me. Okay they never do or, at least, they never did until recently.
I’m pretty good at getting my amaryllis plants to bloom right at Christmastime. I start looking for bulbs right after my daughter’s birthday in mid-October and then get them started around Veteran’s Day in early November. One year I timed my planting perfectly so that my amaryllis bloomed beautiful and red early on Christmas morning.
This year, I searched and waited to find bulbs for sale. None of my usual outlets had any available until well into November. Then life happened, and time got away from me, and I was late in getting my plants started. My bulb and my plant seemed to be on their own schedule, taking their own sweet time in sprouting and growing this year.
My amaryllis bloomed almost a month after Christmas, the same day Ann Voskamp’s book
One Thousand Gifts arrived in my mailbox. I had pre-ordered copies for myself and as gifts for some dear friends. Because of the frequent and continuing snowstorms we’ve been enjoying (ahem) here in the northeast, my books seemed to take their own sweet time in arriving. I tracked the slow progress of my packages as they made their way from warehouse to mailbox, frustrated by the days when snow prevented any delivery of mail at all. When the books arrived on the same day my amaryllis bloomed, I thought it
a happy coincidence as Ann’s book was my final Christmas gift to me and to friends.
I had no idea.
There has been much waiting in my family, in my household, throughout the past year. We have been waiting to find out whether or not my son would be able to enlist in the Army. I’ve not been in love with the idea of him enlisting—something having to do with sending my dear, beloved boy into harm’s way, I guess. But. I’d seen abundant evidence of God’s leading; His presence with us in the process of deciding the Army would be a good fit for him, so I yielded. With more fear and trembling than faith I prayed those familiar words, “Your will be done.”
And then my son was disqualified from enlisting.
We were encouraged to appeal the decision, to seek a waiver. We asked for letters from his doctor. We waited. We received letters. The first was rejected. We asked for another. We waited some more. My son felt trapped in a horrible holding pattern, wanting desperately to become independent and be on his own but having no place to go.
And I was as helpless to move his plans forward as I was to cause my amaryllis to bloom.
We knew we would have a decision shortly after Christmas and, once the decorations were all packed away, I began to panic. I became more and more fearful that the answer would be no and that the answer would be final. And I had no idea what my son would do then.
And I knew God had every right to say no.
This year, I’ve been working my way through Eugene Peterson’s devotional,
The Message Remix: Solo. One morning at a low point of fear and panic, I read from Exodus 3 about God speaking to Moses from a burning bush. Reverend Peterson, in his notes on the passage, encouraged me to pray asking God to reveal himself to me today in a fresh way, a way that he has never revealed himself before. So I did. I got on my knees and through my tears prayed that God would reveal himself as present and working good in my son’s life
no matter what decision we received.
I got up off my knees and looked around. Nothing. No burning bush. Not even a
hummingbird, God’s usual messenger when I pray asking to see His presence with me.
I then picked up my copy of One Thousand Gifts and found my place in chapter five. In that chapter, Ann Voskamp wrote of giving thanks, of finding grace in places of suffering. She told the story of her son badly injuring his hand in a fan and of not knowing if he would lose fingers or even his entire hand. She told of wrestling through the problem of seeing God as good, of being able to give thanks in hard places. As the mother of a dear son whose hands coax beautiful music from piano keys, this was a difficult chapter to read.
Because sometimes our beloved children do lose fingers and hands and sometimes they lose their very lives in this dangerous and broken and fallen world. And sometimes the answer is no when we’ve pinned all our future hopes and dreams on one particular path. And I profess to believe in a good, loving, powerful, sovereign God who superintends all those things.
Thanksgiving, Ann reminds me, is the key to holding on to the goodness, to grasping the glimmers of grace in the hard places. Her book chronicles her journey in counting a thousand gifts given by the hand of her heavenly Father, the practice of living eucharisteo. Thanksgiving, she says, always precedes the miracle.
And then I read of her thousandth gift:
1000. Resurrection bloom, an amaryllis, a gift a year in the coming.
The bulb had been a gift from her mother-in-law, received a year earlier. It bloomed after cancer had claimed her mother-in-law’s life. Ann saw the amaryllis and the timing of its bloom as a gift, trumpeting joy, reminding her that joy is always worth the wait.
And I knelt and wept and prayed again, and I gave thanks. I gave thanks for the waiting. I gave thanks for my son. I gave thanks that his heavenly Father had seen him in the jungle on a remote island in the Philippines and placed his hand upon him, bringing him to our home. I gave thanks that he was placed where he could touch a piano and coaxed beautiful music from it when his hands, whole and healthy and good, moved over the keys. I gave thanks that because of the waiting he was able to give the gift of music to his sister at her wedding. I gave thanks that he is here to use his beautiful hands to help shovel the snow that continues to fall and fall and fall. I gave thanks for the snow because I know that it, too, is a gift from my Father’s hand and somehow, that makes it good.
I gave thanks for whatever decision we were about to receive because I knew that the decision would be God’s gift and that He is good, and because He is good He can only give good gifts.
I could give thanks for these things and believe them because God speaks to me and tells me that these things are true. Sometimes He speaks through a burning bush. And sometimes, through a blooming amaryllis.
And two days later, we received word: my son is going to be a soldier.
Asking grace from emily and dear friends at imperfect prose as I tell my lengthy story:
