Lilacs and Patience

When we first moved into this house I was sure that the three giant shrubs in the backyard were lilacs, just like the ones at Grandpa's farm that were so big we could play inside them like a playhouse.

But they never bloomed. And then one of them started turning gray or something. So we were going to tear them out to make room for our crazy garden we're planting this year.

Husband did take out the gray one--because we were afraid there was something growing on it that might spread to the other plants. He was amazingly fast, but it was no small feat. We even left the 2ft.x2ft. root ball out for a week just as a trophy.

And the other two bushes had their days numbered like the Green Mile. But then, a few weeks ago we started noticing a change--dark, berry like things appearing ALL OVER the bushes. I was afraid to hope. But, we both agree, nothing like this appeared at all last spring.

We climbed up (I'm so not going into how insane it is for me to be climbing up our walls at 8 months pregnant) and looked closer--it was still hard to tell, but it really looked like lilac buds! But I still didn't want to get my hopes up.

The other night we saw some lilacs for sale at Trader Joe's and decided that this had to be a match with ours. And today one of them started to Bloom! Our very own lilac bushes, very mature and seemingly recovered from what must have been a brutal pruning by the house-flippers.

All that to say, I'm awful glad we saw the buds and waited it out before we ripped out these bushes to plant sweet corn. There's a beautiful lesson in this about patience, about things not following our timetable, about beautiful, glorious surprises like lilacs growing into the sky. I'm thankful we serve a God whose patience is perfect, who doesn't replant when things don't bloom at the expected time, who prunes sometimes brutally, but always perfectly, and who knows exactly what we need to grow to our best and fullest.