Isaiah 43:19… on children and mums

God is so faithful.

My mama heart has been praying hard this year as I watched many of my “babies” take off for new beginnings- some I agreed with, some I did not. But in the best way I could manage I celebrated them all. So many sleepless nights have given way to mornings of self-doubt. And adult children bring so many new parenting dilemmas – almost all of which are out of my control so I kept on all-but-begging my heavenly father to step in.

Give me a sign that I am doing this right.

Let me know they’re going to be okay.

Lord, let me rest in knowing you protect and provide and restore when I can’t.

And then in the midst of this – I killed all of my flowering mums.

The distraction was necessary and timely because luckily God knows I am just a child too.

I took those mums out of their tight little containers and put them in bigger pots, I added some fresh soil and even a little miracle-gro. I checked on them in the morning and at night looking for signs of life while I watered them and moved them from sun to shade and back to sun to see where they would thrive the best. And even though I was pruning off all the dead twigs and leaves, and visitors would proclaim they were lifeless… I could feel that the plants were not quite dead and began to see sprouts of new life! Day after day I pursued this mission to restore them.

This morning I went out and there were buds and leaves and flowers on the way. As it turns out, I didn’t kill the mums after all. But isn’t it odd that what I was providing in the beginning wasn’t what they needed to thrive into these new beautiful plants? What they needed changed.

Y’all, God is so faithful!

Sometimes we need new soil, a different place in the sun, or protection from it.

Sometimes, wisdom pulled from other sources, like miracle-gro, adds value to what’s already established.

And sometimes the daily prayers, like water to a withering plant- will cause their roots to grow deeper and stronger.

Maybe that’s all my “babies” have truly needed from me in this season.

And so I will continue to pray- not only for them, but for their soil, and their miracle-gro, and their place in the sun.

I’ve got the watering down.

Isaiah 43:19

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.