Blooming through Brokeness

April 18, 2021

Blooming through Brokeness

How has spring been in your neck of the woods? Here it has been absolutely splendid: fluffy flowers, bright colors and little birds making their nests. I've been making floral notes on what has worked and what hasn't for my garden.

I think these are my favorite.

I wish I had a dress made of these pink fluffy flowers! I'd wear that to Buckingham Palace for tea with the Queen! "Oh this old thing? It's my cherry blossom dress!"

Mother Mary with a crown of daffodils

We have a little robin with her nest. So much drama has happened here. A crow has stolen eggs and that breaks our hearts. We have hope her 2 last eggs will make it!

Till last year, 2020, I was all but a green thumb... I loved nature but thought that a garden was for talented people who didn't kill plants like I did. The privileged few who had an inner knowledge of plant language or such. In listening to this weeks Podcast by Fr Dan and Kevin Wells, I saw some similarities with my plants. Perhaps my most favorite is with a little broken unassuming terracotta pot.

Yes, my blog is on this pot of flowers.

Last fall, I attempted to plant a Dutch Lasagna (blog here) for fear that the deer would gobble, slurp and swallow any tulips I planted. The basic idea, you layer bulbs in a pot like a lasagna.

With very low hopes of success and expecting to have just thrown away a potful of bulbs I carefully nestled these little guys away from squirrels, I covered them and bid them a good winter. In the middle of January there were a series of very cold nights where the temperature remained below zero for days and I was sure that my little Dutch lasagnas were doomed. I tiptoed out on a cold day to check on the pots and noticed that one had been pushed over by the freezing wind and was broken. Sighing, I decided to leave her be and see what would happen.

How could anything survive frozen? I asked myself.

Fast forward to April 2021 and my plants not only started to grow, but they started to thrive. I looked at the broken pot with a raised quizzical brow because not only were the little flowers growing, they were blooming beautifully. I debated carefully moving the bulbs, thinking, "With a broken pot all of the water will come out and they will get dry and die." But something told me just to give it a chance. Today, that is the most beautiful pot of flowers.

The cold wind knocked her over.

And she cracked.

It has made me think so much of our mistaken idea that we need to be whole, or fixed or perfect in order to thrive as God intends. St. Thomas, mentioned in today's podcast, was that guy that was full of doubts of God. To him, like to many of us, the doubt of God was so strong. God was distant, a mental photo, a dead man in the tomb. He couldn't accept that this dead friend of his was alive. It just couldn't be. And in that place of arriving only to accept Christ as dead, St. Thomas was also spiritually dead. But then he saw Jesus and as Fr Dan said, "A man of doubt becomes a man of determined faith."

I ask myself how many times we arrive to just the door of spiritual death and think, "This is the most God can do with someone like me? I doubt His ability to help me to grow, to change, I am not capable and as a result He isn't capable?" In a way, we have been knocked over and broken by the cold winds. Thomas felt that thinking his friend, Jesus was dead. Where is our doubt that He can resurrect us?

And we in a way force ourselves into a mental spiritual death, rejecting that with God all things are possible. But with this broken pot of ours, God can bloom through our brokenness. He can help us, in our brokenness, to see what is truly possible:

Overcoming patterns of sin are possible. Sin calls us by our mistake and keeps us stunted if we let it, Christ calls us by our true name. Don't forget, after the sacrament of confession Jesus has forgiven and forgotten. Do yourself a favor and don't mention what He has forgiven to yourself anymore. He doesn't want you to carry that burden that He already forgave. "But I did X, how can I forgive myself?" He already forgave you, your forgiveness isn't greater than His and if anything your doubt of complete forgiveness is an attachment to the sin as your buddy. Kick that well-known bad friend of sin to the curb. The emotions, friendship and expectation you had encountering that pattern of sin was a scam. Sin scams us into thinking we are gaining something or some friendship with that action and it is just that: a scam. The devil deceives all the way past confession to tell us it just isn't possible to change. Kick that prison chain-ball out of your ballpark.

You got it! Going into confession: Kick it away!

Overcoming self-imposed limits on acts of faith. Why hold back? Afraid someone will call you zealous? People you love need you to have faith, because your weak faith and my weak imperfect faith helps to feed faith of others. Yes, I too get that weird feeling talking and writing about my faith! It would be easier for me to write about just my flowers or the birds or the sunshine. But faith is the foundation for hope and love, so why not share what I have? If I had a bag of chips I'd share, and this is so much better.

Overcoming self-imposed doubts on hope or bringing hope to others. Why not hope? Hope for heaven is worth sharing! Hope for sanctity. Hope for meeting favorite saints, our children lost before birth, our resplendent Mother Mary. Heck yeah, hope away! Spread that hope. Others are hurting for you to hope and to share that hope with them.

Overcoming limits on how much we love: I love what Mother Theresa said on love, "Love never counts, it just gives" what if you allowed yourself to love, to love without fear of how you were taught to love, to love without fear that it won't be reciprocated, to love without disgust of the person you are loving who is just so hard to love. Love given to another is really love given to Jesus, to the little hidden reflection of Him in the hurt, pain, arrogance or fear of the other. Speak truth with love to those you encounter and don't be afraid to love to hard.

I know this Man who got the wrong sentence, dragged down the street, nailed to a cross, and suffocated to death. He wasn't afraid to overcome sin, overcome acts of indifferent faith, overcome doubt of hope or love too hard. People called Him zealous, and spit at him and He loved them and their spiritually blind eyes too.

Alive and with us in the Eucharist.

Broken for us.

Great life is possible to grow out of the broken vase of our hearts and stories. The only one who will say you are too broken to function, isn't your Father. He, too ,was broken for us. Feel free to share your broken vessel to bloom with courage this week in overcoming and letting life flower out of you like springtime!