“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” -Rumi
It’s been one month since I posted about the frost and what I thought was a devastating loss on my flower farm. A lot can happen, and a lot can change in one month. Despite the brutally hot and dry weather we’ve been having here, the flower field is actually doing quite well.
Now, I’m facing a different loss. My dad had open heart surgery on April 22nd, and after a few very hard months in the hospital, he is in acute respiratory failure and was moved to hospice care on July 4th. Life right now is minute by minute as I watch my dad slowly fade away.
My dad loved to garden, and when he moved to Georgia a few years ago to live the nomad life in his camper, he had pots upon pots of flowers that he would grow and tend to on his picnic table.
This year’s flower farm isn’t going to be the big, amazing success that I had dreamt about. The majority of my time the last couple of months has been spent in the hospital at my dad’s bedside. Precious time with very few lucid moments that I am so grateful for as I’ve watched my dad's mental and physical health decline, and his quality of life deteriorate.
As I sit at my dad’s bedside in hospice, writing this blog post, my mind is filling with ideas and ways that I can honor him through my flower farm. One way is to simply keep on sticking my hands in the dirt and growing. My dad would have been so proud to see my love for gardening that he passed down to me grow into an amazing flower farm.
Below is one of my dahlia seed babies that I thought was destroyed by the June frost. She is full of new life and a true testament that there is always something beautiful waiting to blossom on the other side of our wounds.
Nothing can prepare me for the wound of losing my dad, but I have faith and hope that with time the wound will slowly begin to heal and something beautiful will blossom from it.
"My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:26
Make today awesome on purpose :)
Stephanie