Hope Deferred

Shane has often said that he never worries about me spending too much money when I walk into a store. I'm not a shopper, I hate shoes and as long as the clothes cover me up... well, I'm good. My house decor is simple because I don't like to dust. I don't buy nick~nacks.

Spending money for me is never an issue unless......unless, it is a book store or a green house. Then I just about send my man into cardiac arrest. He has to budget me and budget me tight or I can't help myself.

In his defense, I have planted over three hundred trees and shrubs on our place since we moved here. In mine ....hmmmmm, I have no defense... yes, I do, I have gotten most of them for around a dollar a piece. (I know my soil conservation workers on a first name basis!).

Anyway, enough confessing here, the deer killed one of my apple trees over the winter and so this spring,

~~~~~~~I GOT TO GO TO LONE PINE!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~~

As it would happen, I arrived just as they had finished unloading the biggest truck of bare root fruit trees a gal could get her hands on. I got first pick, all the pretty ones were still there!!

I left with an apple, and a plum, and a cherry.....oh, and a peach!

No, I didn't get them for a buck and I really wish you could have seen Shane's face. It was like that Visa commercial ~Priceless
.......... Sorta.

We got them all planted and watered and I was so excited about them, especially the peach. I have four other peach trees but they had been so spindly when I planted them( that is what happens when you get them for a buck) that they still were not ready to produce. But this one had bloom buds on it!! With in a year or two I would be canning peaches, that tree would catch up to if not pass the others.



Then the horror of horrors, every tree in the whole wide world leafed out...but not my peach. Everyday I would check it.... every day the wood felt more brittle. My tree was dieing.


I watered it and talked to it and gave it every tree remedy there is but those little buds stayed shut tight and I gave up. There is a one year warranty on them, but Lone Pine no longer had bare root, only potted trees for ten dollars more... I'm addicted but not insane. I left it in the ground to be dug up next spring for a replacement.

What a disappointment.

Have you ever been at that place? The place of hope deferred? Or maybe even, hope denied?

I have, I have written about a "safe" hope because I can tell you about a peach tree with out emotion.
But there are others ~things I wanted to do for and with my children that I am starting to see will simply not happen in their childhood. There are babies that I hoped for that are not coming.... after all Grace is seven, seven years of an empty womb, God is saying something.

There are places I wanted to take them, things I wanted to teach them. ~ No, we can't speak three different languages like I had hoped. Sometimes, I don't think we even speak English all that well.

I have this pang of anxiety, like I am racing a clock that marches on with much more efficiency than I could ever posses. There are times that my candle of hope flickers. I have to pray and pray hard just to keep it from blowing out altogether.


It would all be too much, if.... if it were not for the peace that my Saviour sends me. What a blessing to be able to crawl up in his lap and like a child with a skinned up knee cry out my frustration on his shoulder. " Lord, things are not going right! ...................... This and that are broken........... my son is hurt, Lord........and the doctors keep draining my savings.............. and my grandparents, Lord, they are so old and feeble, it hurts to watch them go through this ...........and Shane took another pay cut just to keep his job..... and something is making me up set.................... and Lord, you said...... you said!!!!!!"

Out it pours, in such a jumbled mess that if He did not have perfect ears he would not have understood. There I stay on my knees waiting, until I feel it, that peace, the peace that surpasses all understanding. Until I am standing in the middle of the storm but I myself am calm. Now, here is the hard part. To walk away and not pick all of my unloaded burden back up.

You've heard the saying "give your troubles to the Lord, he'll be up all night anyway." Well, something else I've learned ~It didn't catch Him by surprise. Me? You bet! Him? Never, and what's more ~He knows the way out. If I just rest, rest on His precious promises, it will all smooth out. And in the end it will be for my good. It will be perfect. Sometimes,I wish there was a fast forward button and I could just get to the good, but alas, it is in the walk that we grow.

July 26, my Gracie's birthday. We had a BBQ. While the steaks were grilling, my neighbor and I walked the grounds (she's addicted to green too) . We were discussing different plums and such when suddenly I see my peach tree. It was amazing. My tree, after months of struggle, when all reasonable hope had failed, my tree finally triumphed over it's challenge and lived. Battered and bruised but there it stood with tiny little leaves. I fought back the tears, after all you don't cry at parties especially when no one else understands the battle. "I've got to prune this." I said. "Get the dead out of here.... I can't believe that crazy thing made it." As the breeze rustled the newly unfurled leaves,They took on a deeper meaning. I heard the unspoken words direct from the heart of my Saviour.........

This too shall pass....

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick,

but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.

Proverbs 13:11