Last year, after we lost our third baby, a dear friend of mine gave me an orchid. It had several blooms on it already, and the directions said to simply water it once a week. At the time, the gift itself was meaningful. After all, my love language is ‘being thought of’, and she had taken the time to send flowers at a time of grief. But as time went on, the meaning transferred to the care-taking of the plant itself.
My grandma always had lush gardens, veritable carpets of begonias and huge pink peonies and fragrant green hydrangea. While I inherited so very many of her traits, gardening is NOT one of them. I cannot keep any green thing alive. Every summer I try to plant some annuals in this dirt patch that runs alongside my house, and every year at least some of them die. We’ve never ever had houseplants, because they don’t have a fighting chance with me at the helm.
So the fact that this orchid, all white and pink and delicate, managed to keep on living… it took on deep meaning for me. That flowers came after I had lost life. That a new bloom would open on a painful anniversary. That whole entire brand new branches emerged, and blooms burst the week we found we were expecting this fourth baby. That right now, I don’t see any new buds, and the branches are bending under the weight of the full blooms, and this plant is giving all it’s got in it to give… and my body is bending, giving everything to this baby, this new life, that is due any day. It’s been incredible to walk into my kitchen, on snowy days and windy days and tearful days and joyful days, and see this orchid tell my story.
This orchid tells the story of our year. The story of our Lent: death, resurrection, life, hope. Not that this baby is like the resurrected Christ. But it feels like a new and restored promise, and hope has been resurrected in me. I fully expect these blooms to fall, one by one, as we welcome this precious new child into our arms and home, and am so grateful for this orchid to have told our story.
-Anna {girl with blog}
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Anna! This is so beautiful! What a gift! I have goosebumps reading this! God is so good! I am so excited for Baby R’s arrival!! 🙂 Praying for you friend!
So beautiful, friend.
Beautiful! Thinking of you so often as you get ready for this new one to enter our world. What a joy!
Beautifully written and what an awesome plant.
Beautiful. You’re in my prayers.
I can so easily relate to the heart of this post, and not just because my orchids have great significance too. Not because my other houseplants also survive only because they’ve learned to live like cacti. Though those things are something we have in common, I can relate to the heart of hope and the beauty God gives us even in the midst of suffering, even in the waiting, until we see the promise fulfilled – whether it be the life of a child as it is for you, or something entirely different as it is for me. He is truly faithful to fulfill, but how precious that He shows us how He is with us in the space in between. Lovely post.
This so touches my heart, when I lost my daughter I had no hope. I felt as if my heart had died but slowly the Lord tended my heart and brought it back to life x
truth here
and beauty!