There’s a special day in early spring when a local business offers potting of plants and soil–for free. All we have to do is purchase plants from them, and provide the containers. I gather all of my pots with brown, scraggly dead plants, quickly pull the old plants and dump the remaining soil into the raised vegetable bed in my back yard. There’s always room for more dirt. I love coming back with lots of pots full of small plants with a promise of blooms to follow.

A month or so later, while getting the raised bed ready to plant fledgling tomato plants, I noticed a small green stem. On it was a tiny leaf. I think this is a Begonia from last year. There’s something challenging to me about nursing a plant into something more flourishing. I carefully potted the fragile stem with its leaf alongside an emerging pink geranium that had wintered over successfully. I hoped the stem would flourish but it didn’t matter because the geranium would fill the pot.

Two months later:

From a small stem came these beautiful blooms.

Those blooms excite me more than a large pot of flowers that someone else plants and I buy in full bloom.

We are beginning a new session of GriefShare and there are a dozen people who are facing the winter part of life: the death of a loved one. Their winter is like those poor, scraggly spent plants.

Each time I hear their stories, I am reminded how difficult grief is.  At some point, they will emerge–if they work through their grief and lean on the Giver of Comfort–with a sweetness that comes from experiencing grief and loss. “Sweetness?” you might ask. I can’t say all people emerge this way, but I’ve seen it happen often. They will be different. A better different.

A wise writer, C.S. Lewis, said this:

One who has journeyed in a strange land cannot return unchanged.

No one invites death. Or change. Strangeness. Or hard times. But they come to all of us. When they come, how will those changes leave you?

I’ve experienced changes and hard times. So have you. Death. Difficult relationships. Financial worries. Concern over children or grandchildren. Health issues. Loss of a job. Aging. That’s just a few.

I hope that in my life, I might emerge like that small twig of a green stem into the beautiful blossom pictured above. How about you?