People have asked me to tell this true story. It’s long, but here goes….
Back in 1974, I bought a small corn plant at a local nursery because, well in the 70’s, everyone had a jungle in their apartment. But it didn’t thrive, so I put it in the bathroom to get more moisture. Every time my to-be-hubby came over, he’d been down, waggle his finger and tell the scrawny four-leafed heap, “You better grow, little guy, or I’ll make her pitch you out.” Yes, we talked to our plants back then. It was a 1970’s thing.
Fast forward through the years. We moved 22 times in 33 of them, and the corn plant was always last on the truck and first off. Then in 2005, we had to leave because of Katrina. All of our salvageable items were put in a storage pod and sent to San Antonio. Only some of our clothes, the “very breakables” and our prized possessions (well, and the cats) would travel with us. People from our church gathered to help us pack and bid us farewell. Corn plant by then was over seven feet tall…a scrawny-trunk thing we tied to the wall with string and thumb tacks. No way would it survive months in a storage unit. Six men stood in our garage constructing a container to house the plant, which would travel in the bed of my husband’s truck. Using cardboard and plywood they encased it as if it was Michelangelo’s David.
As I followed in my car, I watched through the windshield wipers as the the wet winds whacked the carefully plotted-out tower. When we crossed the border into Texas, I gasped as it bent into a jack-knife. Tears welled. For three hundred more miles it bounced and bowed toward the bed of the truck. About 1 a.m. we arrived at my family cabin in the Texas Hill Country, which would be home until he found a new job. That’s when my husband analyzed the damage. I blubbered as he dismantled what remained of the tower and confirmed my worst fears. All the angst over the past few days following the hurricane poured down my cheeks. I took the top of the plant and jammed it into a gallon jug, filled it with water, and set it by the window. My husband, instinctively knowing not to question my futility, carried in the pot with the bare trunk and plopped it next to the same window. Somehow, we just couldn’t toss it down into the ravine gully.
The snippet grew roots inside the plastic jug. Hubby found a job in Florida, so we moved – this time with plant-jug steadied on the floor board of my car. We left the scraggly trunk behind. Later my cousin opened the cabin for the spring and found it had sprouted! She kept watering it and the next summer we snipped it off the trunk, jugged it, and took it back to Florida. Now we had two corn plants, side by side in the same pot.
In 2008 we moved back to Texas. For reasons I will not go into, my husband developed medical problems and grew more and more ill. During this time, one of the corn plants wouldn’t thrive. It’s leaves were lighter in color, the other was lush and green. As he diminished, so did the plant. One by one the leaves yellowed and withered. I planted it in it’s own pot but no amount of soil, food or horticultural care would stop it’s decline. Eventually, two years later, the scraggly one died. The last leaf dropped off. It left me with an eerie feeling, to be realized forty-eight hours later when my husband died in the shower getting ready for work.
I moved with the healthy one to an apartment, and my son later moved in with me to ease my widowhood. Lo and behold, a “shoot” began to grow off the surviving corn plant. An offspring. Here is the plant today, June 2017.
My son no longer lives with me, but often when he comes over, he bends down, looks at the corn plant and says, “Well, I guess God wants us both to live a bit longer. Lookin’ good, plant.”
On the “bad days” when my chronic pain gets to me, I see the lush green plant and it helps me put things in perspective. It is as if God is telling me He still wants me to “bloom where I am planted.”
I learned a godly truth from a bunch of cilantro. Sitting in my fridge for a week or so, I noticed some of the leaves had rotted before I got to use them in my food. My first instinct was to chuck the whole thing. But I love cilantro, and it isn’t cheap. So I decided in order to keep the lush green ones from being contaminated, I’d pluck them away and sealed them in a storage baggie. Much less icky that snapping away the slimy, brown ones and getting the gunk on my fingers. Blech.
keep them from contaminating us, and uses the good He has found in us to do His will. Then He bags and seals us in His Spirit to protect us and keep us fresh until He can use us.
If it hasn’t happened to you, it will.
algorithm two millennia ago: Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer (Romans 12:12). Jesus used Scripture to keep Satan from seeping into his thoughts while he was in the wilderness being tested. 
It made me realize how much we believers need each other in times of weakness. It also showed me how ready people are to help, even without us asking. That’s the love of God flowing through,spreading from one hand to another, muscle to muscle and bone to bone in the Body of Christ.
in need and we need to be needed. It’s a two way street. Part of the commandment from our Lord is to love one another. That means getting into each other’s messy lives by helping and being of help. The love of Christ flows from one human to another. To not receive help from others is to block that flow.
My husband and I moved to seven different cities over a ten-year period as he pursued his career. Unlike the old adage states, I found the third time was not the charm. Neither was the fourth, fifth or sixth I didn’t “do” change very well. I would grumble and complain, and become anxious of the unknown. Then, my pets’ behavior taught me some important lessons to remember whenever I face uncertainty.
for us as well as our pets, but there would soon be familiarity and routine again as well as the excitement of exploring the new surroundings. Some things might be better than before, or not. But one thing remained certain. We’d be there to care for our cats and help them adapt.
Over my first month as an internet missionary, I have felt the weightiness of words. Words can build up hope or slash a person’s dreams. They can offend or bolster one’s beliefs. They can trigger interest or make someone click off and seek elsewhere on the web.
As Christians, we have been given the Word. We need to not only monitor what comes out of our mouths, but what is typed on our QWERTY boards and appearing on the screens of people we may never have direct contact with.
I have the option to choose to play a winning hand. The daily challenges which appear on my phone each morning guarantee they can be won. Sometimes that is more of a challenge than other days. There are times I have to trust that I am playing a winnable hand, because as I flip through the unplayable cards it sure doesn’t seem possible. But eventually a pattern opens up, and I begin to see that it is plausible after all.
A God lesson in the midst of a storm…
dead end. Maybe even a dark closet with the door closed. But when He calls, who will we act more like? The compliant and totally trusting cat, or the one who would rather have his way, even though he is afraid and unaware of what is about to happen?
I have a cross-shaped plaque hanging on my door jamb. Cut out in the center is the name of Jesus. Each time I use my key in my latch, it reminds me He is with me in my going out and my coming in. Yesterday the wind whistled through the corridor to my apartment. I noticed the plaque had flipped around backward. God, once again, sent me a message.
evening after, or a few days later it thunks my brain. Ah – okay. That was You, Lord. That serendipity was orchestrated by You alone to encourage me, correct my path, or confirm I am in Your will and am headed in the right direction. It always leave me with a tingly warmth that spreads from my heart into my tear ducts.
is just as valid. Souls are being won and hearts are being touched. I am humbled to be asked by Campus Crusades for Christ Canada through The Life Project to come onboard as a writer and editor. It has been a long discerning and vetting process. But as with any missionary, I must raise my own salary.
An eighty year-old friend of mine told me of a cruel joke her older siblings would play on her when she was a little girl in order to prove their dominance. They told her they were going to give her to the “rag man”.
Where Did You Find God Today? 