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Ive been thinking about my great grandmother a lot lately. October 11, it will be exactly 3 years since she passed. I have to remind myself in these times when I miss her so much, that she is WAY better off than any of us. She was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma in January of 2006. Multiple Myeloma is a rare and painful bone cancer. She started chemo and radiation treatments soon after her diagnosis. She went from being able to get around and do things, to not being able to do much of anything. She was in so much pain and she was so sick from the treatments. I regret not spending as much time with her in those final months every day, and I always will until I get to see her again.

I do remember one weekend I went in and stayed with her so that my great-grandfather could get out and run errands and have a break from doing all the work at the house. She loved to garden! And boy, did she have a green thumb. I am very much like her in almost every way EXCEPT in gardening. Ha ha, I think I could look at a plant and it will die. LOL! Well for the exception of my new flowers I planted on Monday, I haven't killed them yet ha ha! But anyway, back to my thought. Her favorite were roses, hence why I love them. She always had roses of every color. The year before she got sick was my last semester of my senior year in high school. I was at her house one day that summer and she asked me what my favorite color of roses were and I told her red and yellow. I went home that afternoon and really didn't think much of it. August got closer and closer and the day that I was to move to Johnson City inched near. I moved and before I knew it, October had come and I was eating dinner with James when I got the call that my friend needed to talk to me. When I get there my parents had called her and wanted her to let me know that my great-grandmother had passed.

The next morning I head home for the funeral. The day of the funeral it was so cold and I had pneumonia. When I got back to their house after the funeral, there were so many people around me that I couldn't take it. So I grab a coat and go out back. What I ran in to, I can not explain. As cold as it was, there were red and yellow roses growing on the fence out back. I asked my poppy when they were planted, he told me that she planted them before I left for college.

At that moment, I sensed God whisper to my heart that the rose bush was a picture of what He was doing with my life and I truly believe the roses were there for me to let me know that Granny was there cheering me on in everything I do. Through everything in the last 3 years I have went through, I think back to those roses and the display of God's splendor.

But, like this plant, I had reached the fullness of His glory in our current soil. I sensed Him telling me that we were ready to be divided into separate plants so that His glory would be more fully displayed, as He planted each of me uniquely and individually in new places. I was going through a pruning process.

I couldn't bear the thought of it. Would there be more pruning? More breaking up of what had taken years to establish? Would I loose everything that I knew? This was nowhere in my plans and dreams!

It is so painful when God allows our dreams to be shattered, our hearts to be broken, our relationships to be separated and our fears to be realized. I really doubted what God was doing. I doubted any good could come from such loss. I doubted that I could make it through the pain. Yet, as I imagined God's glory being more fully displayed, my heart settled into a place of surrender. It wasn't my plan, but if it was for His glory, wasn't that what I wanted? Wasn't that what Jesus did? Would I also trust Him to ease my sorrow and bring something good from it?

Are you in a season of being uprooted? Has God re-arranged your plans and your future? Are you struggling to trust His ways?


God has shown me how I have been trained by the best to be my best. I have questioned in the years since my granny passed, why he took her from me. She would have had such insight with the things that I have faced. But what I have learned in the last 6 months is that he would not have taken her from me if He didn't think I was ready and to teach me that I need to depend on him. Jesus' life and death displays God's promise to turn our despair into divine joy and our loss into a legacy as we depend on and trust in Him. I have been in times when I didn't think I could make it. But years later, I see how God took my doubts and sorrow and used them to draw me into absolute dependence and sweet surrender to Him for the display of His splendor.

Lord, I want to reflect Your glory through the display of my dependence on You. As painful as it is, I realize Your splendor is revealed in my brokenness as I rely on Your love and strength. I put my trust in Your plans and not my own today.