A Rosebud
A few months ago I downloaded the app Procreate onto my iPad and invested in an iPen. What started as a desire to stop the mindless scrolling and playing games on my phone became a fun creative outlet. For several weeks I just played around with the different brushes and effects, watching some basic tutorials, and just having fun. I discovered that I could take a photo, upload it to the program, sketch the outline from the photo, and paint overtop, eventually removing the picture and the sketch and being left with just the art I had created.
So I started with a photo of Dawson (our dog) in the woods. It looks cartoonish and a total amateur-hour creation, but he’s still cute. Then I worked on an early crocus that I snapped a photo of walking Elizabeth home from preschool one day. And for the last week I have been working on a yellow rose bud. Based on a photo I took last summer in our backyard, I have worked a little bit each day getting the colours right, the shading, the depth, the feel. I finished it this morning. And as I was looking for a quote to put beside it, I came across the following:
For each thorn, there’s a rosebud,
For each twilight - a dawn;
For each trial - the strength to carry on,
For each storm cloud - a rainbow;
For each shadow - the sun...
For each parting - sweet memories when sorrow is done.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I haven’t been able to shake this poem all day. Because it feels so true right now. Even though the day was sunny, my heart and mind have been in shadow. I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps I have not eaten well enough today or its thattime (you ladies know...), perhaps I am feeling the weariness of the mundane, or perhaps the grief of separation from loved ones is demanding attention. In reality, it is probably a combination of all those things.
But even as I find myself in shadow I know with the same certainty that I know my children will be hungry soon that there is hope. There is hope, and growth, and peace, and sweet sweet memories to come. If I were to wander outside to that rose bush, all that I would find there right now are stalks with thorns. But I know, I KNOW because I have seen it happen every year, in a few months there will be the biggest brightest yellow roses.
It doesn’t take away heaviness of my heart.
"Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
Lamentations 3:21-23
Friend, I don’t know what shadow you find yourself in, or what thorns are causing pain. What I know is that there is hope. Whatever you are walking through need not consume you. You are a rosebud that God is growing into a beautiful rose amidst the thorns.
