Surviving The Winter Seasons

Last fall my husband's grandparents packed up their longtime home and moved to a smaller ranch house to be closer to family. Declining health and mobility made it a necessity.
Grandma Joan was especially sad to be leaving behind her garden and many flower beds. As a sentimental gesture, I took clippings from her beloved hydrangea bushes in hopes that I could nurse them through the winter and present them to her as a late housewarming gift this summer-- you know, bring a little bit of old to the new. Well, as luck would have it, a few of those clippings did survive the winter and have been speaking to me ever since. Let me unpack that a bit.Â

Have you ever had a phrase or a thought resonate with you and you just couldn't shake it? Even if you're not completely sure why? Occasionally this happens to me and I always find that it's the Holy Spirit's way of starting a conversation with me. And so it was with a little phrase from 1 Corinthians 4:16 "Though outwardly we are wasting away..." I watched those clippings appear to languish as the cold weather settled in and stayed long past its overdue exit (in my book). For a minute, I was convinced they were goners, but just when I was about to scrap the experiment, (quite literally) I started to see the tiniest hints of new green leaf nodes. Something was happening after all!
