Planted

I ran wild, along with my siblings, on the two acres that felt like an estate. I always loved the visits we’d take to our grandparents a few hours up north, nestled among tall trees in Pennsylvania. Those were formative years, when you have no sense of the wider world or troubles out there, you just know there’s a garden in front of you to explore; there’s a treasure map to be drawn, a story to be written, a kick-ball game to be won, hand-picked strawberries to bite into and let the juice drip down your skin, a day to be filled with fun.

My grandmother’s clothes-line stretched twenty yards, a long space that bore the weight of decades of homemaking, mixed with joy and grief. And underneath lay a row of peonies, plants that came up out of the earth each year, unfurling with their leafy greens and large buds. We’d stand close, perplexed by the ants crawling over the soon-to-burst buds. Then the ruby petals appeared, layering out in perfect form, along with an aroma of spring, a sweetness that still takes me back.

I learned to play, to dream, to explore here. To believe that the world was good and safe, and that I was loved. These moments of simple joy, of beauty, of family bonding formed my imagination, planting seeds of hope that more goodness would unfurl, that life would hold the aroma of peonies where ever I’d go.

Blooming

My planted life took root, and my life and heart grew. Some days shadows would lurk, and a lie would hiss “what is wrong with me,” but mostly things were going right. While juggling a job that I suppose would impress people, in my high heels and pearls among the corinthian columns of the Capitol, I kept dreaming about the future, when I could trade in trying to be someone in the world, for playtime in the garden again. And things seemed like they were going according to script.

We sat stationary on a wooden bench, while children and frantic mothers whirled around us, and a few fathers stood off to the side, surely talking of the important news of that day that’s now forgotten. With my betrothed by my side, I whispered a dream, remembering back to the clothesline peonies and the safety and joy of those scenes. “I want to have five children,” I told him. And I see myself, clear as day in that park, imagining, feminine beauty of my early 20s unfolding and believing my life was blooming, hoping that my natural gifts — love, desire, fertility, nurture — and whatever else it is that God gives to a woman who wants to have children — would flourish.

I don’t remember his reply, but I do remember that vision, that warm hope for a future, and weeks later, all those preparations came together for the path I dreamed. As I slipped on my wedding dress, the florist arrived, with my perfect bouquet for a perfect spring day. The softest white and light pink peonies overflowed, wrapped with a white satin that I held with love and hope.

Pruned

Six years later those peonies, preserved and still pink, lay unaware of the chaos around them in a delicate antique bowl I’d inherited from my grandmother. For years they had artfully, and poignantly so I thought, sat on top another antique, a side table made from cherry trees from my grandparents’ property, as a memory and a dream.

The dried peonies had survived one move, but this was the end. With boxes strewn around me, a symbol of the nightmare of the last seven months, I stood next to a trash can. Divorce papers were already a few months dusty; now it was time for the house to divide, a brutal death I still couldn’t comprehend.

I held the bowl in my hands, staring into the beauty for a few minutes, remembering the day I cradled them alive, remembering my grandmother’s peonies, and wondering what abyss lay ahead, what people would think. You don’t know how much lies can wither a soul. With a calmness that could only come from above, I overturned the bowl, watching my peony petals spill one by one into the trash can. God’s garden sheers felt heavy, as the dream of that day fell away; my heart pruned and pleading for providence to show me the way.

Transplanted

I came back home. It’s amazing how God designed the body to survive. How your heart carries wordless cries in desperate pain, yet you still manage to go to work, walk the dogs, wash the dishes, do all the things you need to do.

But a good Gardener sees the vision, and tends a tender shoot with care. Time was soil, cultivating new growth, absorbing the pain, mixing ache with the oxygen of hope to grow something new. Those insidious lies of what’s wrong were exposed and opened for God’s love to fill. And oh how I can see now how the roots of bitterness needed to be ripped out, how I needed to be in a new place so that good growth could take root, so that I could become the fruitful beauty God intended me to be. The planting, the blooming, the pruning — none of it’s been wasted.

I’m still so grateful for the way I was planted — believing in love and belonging. It’s a new landscape I find myself in, one where I’m living a life that the girl in her grandmother’s garden, the young woman in the park, and the betrayed wife, could have never imagined. The life that seemed so natural, so necessary, feels like an evanescent fantasy. Tears still water the ground of this new place I’m in, yet this transplanted life is blooming, too. In ways that I never imagined, in ways that others desperately need — in ways that are bringing out new and beautiful parts of me. Like last week, gathering with women, still in those desperate days of betrayal, looking for hope. I sowed seeds and prayed that my heart was a welcoming garden, a vision for women to know that God is good, and his mysterious ways are working miracles. And I’m still dreaming, too.

I’m pondering this all in my heart this weekend, how to keep growing in a transplanted life. Maybe you are too, a holiday weekend that looks different than you ever dreamed. Or maybe it’s all that you wanted, but you still can shake the feeling that there’s supposed to be something more. There’s that haunting of Eden that calls you ever onward…

Grieve.

Remember.

Reminisce.

Cry.

Look at old photos.

Give thanks.

Breathe.

Dream up stories to write out of grief.

Find beauty.

Trust.

Pray.

Wander a field of peony fields.

Keep growing, keep blooming, friends.

And enjoy a few photos from the loveliest peony field a few miles from where I live. One I stumbled upon a few years ago when my heart needed hope. One that filled my soul with memories and dreams this weekend.