Friday, August 13, 2010

Celebrating diversity in my garden!











Celebrating diversity in my garden!

I have written earlier about my 3 tubs of flowers in the front yard. I put the same kind of flowers in each one in the Spring, and they all grew differently. Now that it is too hot for petunias, I put salvia in the tubs, along with the marigolds, and the salvia and marigolds in each tub grew differently. On 7/24/10, while watering my garden in the early morning, I realized that the 3 tubs each stood for us 3 sisters. Just as each tub started out with the same number and kind of plants and all grew differently, so did Christine, Ivia and I! We have the same parents, same set of DNA, yet we each grew differently. Each of us are individuals and each of us complement the others. Ivia has great organizational skills. She was the timekeeper. She made sure we stayed on our meal schedule, which was really important for Al, being diabetic, and for me, having to eat 6 mini-meals. Christine was the one with the fashion sense. She, knew where to go in Kohl’s to find the scarves, helped me pick out a variety of colors, had a discount card, and then organized the scarves for me when we got home. She is also very giving. She gave me a set of cards with healing scriptures on them and the book “365 Days of Healing”. I keep them on my table by my living room chair and pull them out at random to review the healing words of God. And me, well, I was weak from the chemotherapy, so I acted like my mother-in-law’s show cat* - I sat around, looked pretty and got waited on!!!!!

(*My mother-in-law got a 3 year old Himalayan cat that was raised to be a show cat. He won 1st place in a regional cat show in Atlanta. He didn’t play or run around; he just sat on her lap all day, waiting to be served his dinners, and to be brushed.)

This brings to mind Psalm 139. The entire psalm is beautiful but the last 2 verses apply to my current situation. Verse 23-24 says “Search me, oh God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts. And see if there be any hurtful way in me.” I am asking God to take away doubt and fear and any other negative thought I have that can interfere with His Divine Healing. Verse 24 ends with “And lead me in the everlasting way.” Let me rely on the promises of God, , His everlasting way, not medical science.

I have always loved verses 13-14. “For thou didst form my inward parts; thou didst weave me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are thy works.” These verses confirm to me that we are each individuals, each of us is precious to God, we complement each other, and we need to celebrate our diversity. They also tell me that God is indeed in control. And finally, let us not forget each of us individuals are “wonderful works” of God. We are just as much a wonderful work of God as a majestic mountain range or a colorful coral reef! (I’ve been watching BBC’s Planet Earth DVDs; a wonderful way to experience the creative glory of God!)So thank you God for my sisters, for my husband and daughter, for her fiancĂ©, for my extended family, for my church family, for my friends, for my colleagues! And thank you that we are all individual wondrous works of Yours and that each of us has something important to offer to this world!!!!!!!

The pictures show some unique individuals and unique flowers in my garden. That is Al and I, and I am wearing the shirt our daughter bought me from DisneyWorld; Belle says,"I'm with the Beast." This always gets a healthy healing laugh from my fellow C-word patients when I wear it to the radiation treatment center!!! Al is wearing his Trans-Siberian Orchestra shirt. We attend their Christmas concert every year. The purple flower is a Pilipino violet in the early dawn, just before sunrise. The red and white bloom is variegated salvia. The little lavender bloom is truly a miracle; it is the hydrangea that I almost killed with too much sun; God resurrected it!!

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