Cucumbers and Bleeding Hearts

I first discovered the Curb Market when I was a child.  My grandmother and I would venture there on Saturday mornings to buy cucumbers.  We would take the cucumbers home and turn them into pickles.  The whole process took nine straight days of tending to those cucumbers, slowly transforming them into sweet pickles.  I don’t even like pickles – not any kind of pickles – but making them is fun.  Folks have booths at the Curb Market where they sell things like corn, tomatoes, peas, and butter beans.  And cucumbers, of course.  I especially loved to watch the machine that shelled peas.  I really didn’t mind shelling peas, but I hated shelling butter beans and thought it would be worth the price to let the machine do it.  My grandmother didn’t think so.  In our family, we shelled our own peas and beans.  

Some of the people at the Curb Market had plants for sale.  They weren’t fancy like you would get at a nursery.  They were mostly just things rooted at home and stuck in used clay pots.  There was one that I loved.  I looked for it every Saturday that we went.  The lady who sold them said it was an old-fashioned Bleeding Heart – the vine type.  It had white flowers with red centers.  If I had asked my grandmother, she most likely would have bought me one.  It never occurred to me to ask.  

So . . . fast forward thirty years or so and I am in Tuscaloosa, Alabama having lunch with my friend Ronny Johnston - a friend with a green thumb.  We passed by a nursery and it reminded me of that Bleeding Heart.  I told him about it and he said, “Somebody at work has one in their office.  I’ll just get you a piece and you can root it.”  I had my reservations.   I love plants, but I sometimes kill them.  And I never know how it happens.  But he was so enthusiastic that I thought it just might work.  That little cutting rode 100 miles in a styrofoam cup of water sitting in the cup holder of my car.  I had doubts about it.  For many, many days after it got to my house, I thought it was going to die.  It got all droopy and some a lot most almost all of the leaves fell off.  Things were looking grim, but I persisted.  I put it in a glass jar so I would be able to see any roots that had the courage to appear. Every day I inspected it and said encouraging things to it.  Nothing happened.  Finally, when there were two (2) leaves left, I conceded defeat.  I had made my peace with it and was ready to give up, throw the whole thing in the trash, and forget about it.  A Bleeding Heart was not in my future.  I picked up the jar to give it one last look and I saw what amounted to a miracle.  There was the tiniest thread of a root emerging from that cutting.  Truthfully, I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a root, but I somehow convinced myself that it certainly was and put that jar right back on the kitchen counter.  It deserved a chance.

After I was sure that there were plenty of roots growing, I planted the Bleeding Heart in its own pot.  I was ready for that thing to bloom.  I waited and waited.  It did not bloom.  It grew and grew and grew.  It did not bloom.  It had magnificent leaves and sprouted all sorts of new vines.  But it didn’t bloom.  I fed it, watered it, put it in a nice place where it would get sun but not get too hot, checked on it daily, and told it how much I believed it could do it.  It still didn’t bloom.  How is this possible?  I have done everything right.  It isn’t dead.  It is growing like crazy, but where are the flowers?! What more could that thing want?  Turns out, it just wanted time.  The first year, I got nothing.  The second year, I got beautiful blooms.  Lots and lots of them.

All I really needed was patience.  It wasn’t about me and what I could do for that Bleeding Heart.  It was about letting that Bleeding Heart do exactly what it was designed to do – bloom at the right time.  That is exactly how it is with us and God.  Sometimes, we push and fight to get our way when we really just need to let God do what He needs to do.  I am SO good at giving my problems to God.  I am EVEN BETTER at taking them right back.  That whole trust and obey business - it is a daily struggle for me.  Maybe it is for you, too.  There is a Chinese proverb that says, “Don’t push the river; it flows by itself.”  I have a real tendency to push the rivers in my life when all I need to do is let God plot the course for me.  He knows where He wants me to go.  You, too.  Get ready to bloom.

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.

--Psalm 40:1

And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

--Matthew 6:30

P.S.  Keep praying!  Surgery on March 23^rd at 10:00 a.m.

P.P.S. Just before the first freeze of the winter, I cut back that Bleeding Heart and put the vines in a jar to try to root some more plants.  Here are some pictures  Those things are blooming in the jar!!  I think God is telling me something.