God Moments

A neighbor was telling me about what she calls her "God stories"--miraculous things that happen to her--and how her grandson urged her to write them down. I often have "God moments" too, and her grandson is right--if you don't write them down, you tend to forget them.

I had such a moment on March 1st. On the cover of the March issue of RBI's "Our Daily Bread," is a photo of magnificent pink azaleas blooming in Maymont Park in Richmond, Virginia. And the Bible verse below the picture reads: "For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth." Song of Solomon 2:11-12.

My reaction was, "Yeah, right!" We had plenty of snow still on the ground here and I hadn't seen a flower since last fall sometime. The sun was shining here, at least between the clouds, but flowers? You've got to be kidding.

I assume the photo was taken last year, because this is, after all, March, and I don't think that even in Virginia it would be warm enough for azaleas to have bloomed early enough to get on a magazine cover. It certainly isn't in New York State!

Later in the morning I was out back and I spotted something purple by the back door.

A tiny myrtle flower! Blooming among the green leaves and the twig and dead leaf litter of winter was my first flower of spring.

It doesn't qualify as a miracle, except by people like me, who feel that life is full of miracles--composed of miracles--most of them so small we don't even recognize them, but miracles all the same. It was definitely a "God moment."

SPRING IS COMING

My seed order came the other day from Shumway, and today I saw a patch of green grass under the cedar. I even stroked a couple of the leaves just for fun. I know pretty soon I'll be complaining it's too hot to mow and the grass is growing too fast, etc. but for now, I'm thrilled to see anything alive and at least thinking about growing. The birds are singing like spring, and the squirrels are chasing each other. All good signs.

Then this morning--the first morning in weeks that the temperature was above freezing (never mind the NYC forecasts--they have no clue about life in the boonies)--the wind was actually warm! It didn't last, of course. By late afternoon, the wind was just nasty. And there wasn't much sun all day. What there was, was nice and warm and held the promise of days to come. I keep hoping the back of winter is broken and that the really severe cold is over, but I'm suspicious. We got no January thaw, so this may be our replacement--a February thaw. That's okay. We'll take whatever we can get, and every day that's decent is one day closer to spring that "they" can't take away from us.