From 5/30/2019, after Hurricane Michael
Lord, How did I miss them? I was so busy five minutes ago crying in the prayer garden, wailing out in grief, lamenting all the weeds, how they seem to be the only things really flourishing, bemoaning how the trees are struggling, how the annuals are all too brief in their glory, how the blooms of the roses last only a few days when I need more to sustain a sense of beauty around me. I’m struggling, Lord. The drought is challenging me to keep grass green and pots looking fresh. You know how that keeps my spirit lifted. Then just as I I sat down to pour out my grief I looked out the door and there they were…… the lovely purple blossoms on the shrub-form crepe myrtles along the entrance walkway. I had not even noticed them. They’ve been planted there for five years and NEVER bloomed. I never even knew what color they were. I’d given up on them. They were planted when we built the addition in 2014. I had considered them impotent and pretty useless for their lack of vigor. After the storm when they, like everything else were battered by fallen limbs I considered simply pulling them out and starting over with something else, but I pruned them one last time. They had put out new growth. And you blinded my eyes to what you were doing with them. Today you chose to open my eyes to them at my lowest moment.
They have blooms. Common crepe myrtles that I refused to even consider planting anywhere else on the lot. Because in all the time we have lived here these three and the other one by the street have never bloomed. I had two others cut down a few years ago because they had never bloomed. Today these have blooms. Your timing is always perfect. It always brings hope and teaches lessons. The reason our crepe myrtles have never bloomed is because there was too much shade. Now there is no shade. They have enough sun to actually bloom. I think God is telling me to plant crepe myrtles if I want color AND shade. .