West Texas Reflections

My yard has varicose veins and doesn't seem to care.  I guess the upside is that the mower (that's me) gets a break, but seeing as yard work is  my main form of exercise that's not a good thing.  The cracks are widening and spreading and any day now I wonder if I'll come home and find my dogs missing.                                             

The rains will come when they come, but for now we truly "weather" the lack of moisture with prayer and hopeful viewings of the nightly weather forecast.

The cracks in our lives are just as painful to behold.  We all have those dry spells--biologically, emotionally, financially.  The difference, though, is that the well never runs dry for us.   Elisha's miracle in II Kings testifies to this:  the more empty vessels the woman brought, the more oil was  placed in them.  The Lord provides.

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Recently, I asked a friend who owns a gardening/landscaping operation  if business was slow; just the opposite, he said.  He's never been busier.  What a testimony to us!  Not having a lush green yard doesn't mean we cannot enjoy a beautiful flower bed or hanging plant. Cross applying that same mentality to a difficult moment--loss of a job or of a loved one--might help us survive the droughts that come with grief.  Not only survive it but even grow in the midst of it.

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Many times I have written about my grandmother's life on the farm in Fisher County.  My mother, in her own West Texas reflections, composed this poem years after my grandmother's passing:

          My mother planted flowers;

          I always wondered why.

          It seemed such work

          Too difficult to try.

          The land was so hard--

          Earth, baked dry--

          Brown baked earth

          Under a cloudless sky.

          We carried water for them--

          She and I.

 

          Now, no one carries water;

          No flowers can be found.

          Just a lonely little cedar bush

          With roots deep in the ground.

          The house is gone, and so is she,

          And I wish that I could say,

          "I understand now why you wanted to see

          something beautiful each day."

When cracks appear in the ground or in our hearts--from an absence of water or love or a presence of wildfires or hate--we have an advantage over the dry West Texas ground.  A soothing balm is ours for the asking.  God can replenish our vessels, too.