If having your coffee brought to your dressing table every morning (along with a fresh rose from the garden many mornings) means you’re spoiled, then I’m just one shaving away from ruination.
I’ve read that a woman doesn’t know what a patient man she married until she sees him fishing. Now I’ve been fishing with Bill, and he was patient with me (not that I gave him cause to exercise this virtue) and with the fish. But several years ago, when he brought up the idea of a rose garden, I was quick to tell him that growing roses required diligence and extreme patience—much akin to raising children, the only difference being that rose bushes do stay put. He was determined.
So for many years, Bill grew roses organically. Translated, that meant our house was overrun by ladybugs, corn meal replaced mulch in the garden, microscopic organisms called nematodes grew on a sponge in our refrigerator, and the strange odor of a concoction called garden molasses drifted through the pergola. Daily, he snipped individual yellow leaves from the plants and carefully discarded them in a garbage bag. He cut each blossom in just the right place so the plant was not thwarted. He thrived on buying ailing roses and nursing them to health. (I’m not sure if it was the challenge or the price.) I’ve pulled countless thorns from his hands until I raided the cookie jar and sprung for a pair of special rose gloves for him.
I think you get the picture—his roses received abundant care. But his biggest challenge was that the roses were in an area where the air does not circulate enough for optimal growth. Roses need fresh wind.
Such is life. God cares for us lavishly, pruning us when needed, even replanting us in a new place to stimulate growth at times. And He gives us the fresh wind of His Spirit so that we can blossom in ways He designed. His patience translates into grace. God doesn’t spoil us, but He loves us with such depth and breadth.
So, we’ve moved to the Hill Country and left our rose garden for someone else to enjoy. And now we look out on a garden beyond belief and the Gardener himself tends it. Bill still makes my coffee and tends my potted lemon and olive trees, but I just know one of these lovely mornings, he’ll take me fishing again.
