Driving up a country road means that I was driving north. I don't know if I've mentioned how much I love that about the Midwest. It's a grid, a huge, flat grid of roads going north-south and east-west. Often, you can see for miles in the distance. Sometimes you can even sight your destination when it is barely a pin-point across an expanse of land. The obvious benefit to all this: it's pretty hard to get lost.
That's beside the point, though.
(This is the road in, I think, Kentucky,
which is not really indicative of the distances
you can see in--for instance--Illinois.
But it is the only picture of open road that I have.)
I was driving along, heading north, and I realized that I had a song running through my head: "I spied a young cowboy, all wrapped in white linen, all wrapped in white linen, as cold as the clay." Morbid song, catchy tune. I hummed along, not really thinking about it.
And then. Then I noticed that I was driving behind a Jeep Laredo. Of course that was where the song came from. The Streets of Laredo. Apparently I had read the back of the car, but it had not registered, except to plant a tune in my mind.
Our minds are so weird. Well, anyway, mine is.
My flowers are not growing very well.
My canna lilies are not up at all, really -- just some tiny, blackish-purple pokey looking things that you can hardly make out amongst the mulch. They may or may not grow and bloom.
My zinnias are not thriving. One that was not doing too badly, I stepped on. Shucks. I tried to tilt it back upwards, and I guess time will tell whether I cracked off the stem.
My alyssum is doing better than most of what's out there, but it looks sort of weedy.
The cleome is bizarre. One of the plants is growing fairly well; the other two seem stunted.
The cosmos are also stunted, it seems.
The snapdragons are tiny. They almost seem to be smaller than when I first planted them.
This is not for lack of rain or sun or heat. We've had plenty of all those.
I can't remember what my garden looked like at this point last year. We were in the thick of getting ready for Lulu's wedding, bless her heart.
Sometimes it's hard to have faith when you're waiting for something, especially when you're waiting for something you can't control.
Maybe it's not so bad to let your mind drift unconsciously over to a very hummable country western song now and then. Maybe it anesthetizes the waiting process.
We can plant, water, weed and fertilize, but in the end, it is only the Lord who can make anything grow. Flower. Flourish.
I have a notebook I am keeping about a certain matter of prayer that is the current theme of my heart. I used to write quite often, but now I write more reservedly because it is getting full, and I want God to solve this before I run out of pages. He whispered to me the other day that it might take more than one notebook before we get to the end of this. I didn't like that. I feel like I could handle it if it spreads over two notebooks, or maybe three. But what if it takes seven, or twenty-four?
Today is a stormy, rainy Saturday. After two weekends of road trips, we are blessedly at home. Perhaps it would be a perfect day to lose myself in a good book.
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