Lavender Blossoms

A woman I know gave me a gift of lavender last winter, two bags of it that I have by the pillows on my bed so that I can smell them whenever I need to. Around the same time my mother sent me a pot of lavender as a gift, a big robust plant covered in blooms. It lasted through the winter months and into the spring so I was able to plant it outside in a large container in the little area where I have some plants that bloom all summer long. It’s covered now again with flowers, and through all the long hot summer days we’ve been having it’s been thriving.

Lavender is a plant that is known to be “drought resistant,” and it actually enjoys a climate that is dry and hot and full of sun and a soil that is rocky and dry. The blazing hot and dry summer weather we’ve been having combined with the full sun that hits the area where I have my container garden is perfect for lavender plants.

Different plants need different soil and different growing conditions. Friends of mine always tell me that I have a green thumb, but there are definitely times when I make a mistake or lose a plant because I don’t have the right area or the right soil or the right sunlight to grow it in. Wherever I’ve lived since the house I grew up in, I’ve always had plants. People would give them to me or I’d buy one – I always used to beg my mother for some of the plants in the supermarket even when I was very little, and sometimes she’d agree. Sometimes I have plants that thrive for a time and then I lose them, sometimes I have them for years. I have a Norfolk Island Pine that I rescued from a Marshall’s in Connecticut one summer back in probably the early 90’s that has outlasted almost all of the other plants I had before or since. It was growing in a little pot with two others, and though the others have long gone away to plant heaven, this one has continued to grow bigger and bigger and it sits happily in a window now that no other plant I have would enjoy. I keep thinking that I’ll have to move to a new apartment when it gets too big for the window. There’s nowhere else to put it, and it’s really big now.

I used to test soil and add lime and mulch and pine needles, depending on the needs of the soil and the plants I was planting. Years ago I had a really big fire escape and I had plants cascading all over it. Rose bushes and herbs and flowering plants of all kinds, squash trailing over the sides and morning glories climbing. It was my garden oasis and I’d sit on the window sill in the sunlight and just be there with the plants. The apartment was in the back of the building and it faced a building that had been empty for years. Eventually someone came to renovate it, but for a long, long time I had my own little secret place.

When I first started working in ministry, a little more than six months after I was born again, the Lord sent me to work at an after school program on the lower east side of Manhattan, in Alphabet City on Avenue D. The first day I arrived all I saw was the oppressive looming projects. That area of the city is the largest expanse of housing projects anywhere in the five boroughs. They run from 12^th Street all the way down through Chinatown, building after building, several levels deep, all the way down the East River. I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything there – who was I, a white girl from the Massachusetts suburbs, to think I could go into an area like that and make any kind of difference? But the Lord said to look with His eyes, not my own, and to trust Him that if He was sending me I wouldn’t have to worry about anything because He’d take care of it all. And that’s what He did, for three years, until He brought me out of there and into the work that I do now.

I came to my current job through a community garden at the after school program, a project He’d put on my heart to start for the youth and adults and older adults and families in the area. Always, from that first word He’d spoken to me, I was seeing gardens, because He’d told me He was going to reclaim that area with them. He had me take prayer walks and gave me Zechariah 8. The title of that chapter in the New International Version is, “The Lord Promises to Bless Jerusalem.” Verses 4-6 begin with the vision He gave me while I walked and prayed, “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Once again, men and women of ripe old age will sit in the streets of Jerusalem, each of them with cane in hand because of their age. The city streets will be filled with boys and girls playing there.’ This is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘It may seem marvelous to the remnant of the people at that time, but will it seem marvelous to me?’ declares the Lord Almighty.” Verse 12 continues, “The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people. Just as you, Judah and Israel, have been a curse among the nations, so I will save you and you will be a blessing. Do not be afraid, but let your hands be strong.”

He has brought that word back again and again over the years since then, and just this past week, He brought it back again. I heard from someone who knows the work I do, and she was asking me if I could work with an organization and help support them with nutrition and wellness education while adding a gardening component. I had done something like that last year for one of the places where I was teaching, and it’s exactly the kind of thing I love to do. The other place had a roof top garden and we had many a lovely day up there. This next place has been described to me as a farm in Harlem, and it is with an organization a woman that I met in a seemingly random way suggested I contact almost two years ago. I had tried to contact them several times, but I had never heard back. I didn't know they even had a garden until I got the email the other day. With God timing is everything, and now is the time. There is nothing random with God and nothing out of order. Everything has its season and time and place, and if we let Him, He will order our steps perfectly so that everything falls into place at exactly the right time.

I do not know where He is leading me exactly, but I know the bigger vision and I know that He has confirmed it consistently over the years and brought that word back again and again, showing me more and giving me encouragement to keep on believing in that vision and His word. I sometimes wonder and want to know what’s next, where are we going, when will it all fall into place? But I’m on a need to know basis, and He’ll tell me all I need to know when I need to know it. It can seem frustrating at times, but only when I allow myself to forget how good God is. When I remember how wonderful and full of glory He is, how kind and loving and faithful, then I know that whatever He has planned will bring me such joy it will be like a perfect surprise on a perfect birthday, that one thing that only someone who loves you and knows you in a special way can give.

I’m looking forward to my meeting this week at the garden in Harlem, because I know God’s up to something good. There’s been so much going on lately that has been so discouraging, and that’s always when the blessing is about to overflow. Let your hands be strong, He’s told me, do not be afraid. I will save you and you will be a blessing. So let your hands be strong.

Psalm 1:1-3 tells us, "Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither - whatever they do prospers." I walked many years in ways that were far from God, and now because of His grace He has made me like that tree planted by streams of water, like a lavender plant that has found its perfect place to bloom. 

Blessings,

Jannie Susan