Seeds Do Sprout

I was out in my backyard the other day, cleaning up dog debris, so I was down low. And there, under the picnic table, I saw a cracked clay pot, partially filled with dirt, with four green leaves sprouting out of the top.

I stopped what I was doing and went over to investigate. Scraping the caked mud off of the outside, I revealed the Christmas montage that was painted on the outside – a Christmas tree in a snowstorm, valiantly protected by a scarecrow wearing a blue shirt and brown hat.

I smiled, remembering the fat little first grade fingers that had handed me that pot with such pride. How could three years have passed already?

He was so excited about the secret that he had planted inside.
He was so disappointed when no secret was revealed, when the bulbs he had so carefully planted refused to sprout.

I scooped dirt out of the flowerbed and gently pressed it down around the leaves, covering the tops of the bulbs.
Bringing the pot inside, I placed it on the windowsill, over the kitchen sink.
My son noticed it immediately when he came in. He looked at me with questioning eyes.
“Do you recognize that pot?” I asked him.
“Uh-huh. Where’d you get the plant?”
“Those are the bulbs you gave me…with the pot. Remember?”
I can see the wheels turning in his head as he processes what I have just said. And then he smiles. The kind of smile that makes all the petty annoyances of mothering disappear, bursting them like fireworks on the Fourth of July.
“I thought they weren’t going to grow,” he admits. “How’d you make them grow?”
“I didn’t,” I confess. “I guess they were just finally ready.”

And, it comes to me. Seeds are like that.
They grow when they are ready, and not a moment before.
It does no good to second guess, or worry, or despair of the process.

I am filled with hope and excitement.
Finally…finally, the seeds I have been carrying in my soul, the ones that have been so deeply buried they could barely breathe, the ones that I had forgotten…finally…they are beginning to sprout.
Finally, they are ready to blossom.

And the colors...they are going to be amazing!