Take a Sad Song and Make it Better

 "Why are the tomato plants dead?" asked Asherel.
Why indeed. Why, no matter how carefully I follow the directions on the fail safe packet of tomato seeds, do I never manage to get them past the seedling stage?
"Did you water them?"
"Well, I may have forgotten to water them this week. But I was watering them until now.....I think....."

I even bought the little fail safe peat pot starter kits, designed especially for people who can't seem to get past the difficulty of filling their own little cups with healthy dirt, placing a seed the right depth in the dirt and finding just the right window to place them in. With the fail safe peat pot kit, all I had to do was open the package, add water til the peat pots swelled to double their size and plop the seed in.

To my delight, they had sprouted, then had grown sweet little leaves, two on each, and then developed into snake like wispy long plants. No more leaves developed and they looked anorexic. And then I got busy with my worries over sister Amy and the wedding....and apparently, the little fellows died. Like all my seedlings die.

I went over and looked at them. They all lay like dead skinny worms flat across the fail safe peat pots. Just to be sure they were really dead, I added water and put them back in the window.

I have 4 hardy house plants in the sun room that I have not killed. I have had them for fourteen years. I know that because I got them when Asherel was born. They often look droopy and almost dead themselves, again because I may have forgotten to water them. But then they spring back to life and have soldiered on in this home of plant growing nincompoops for over a decade.They are the picture of resilience.

What makes my ineptitude in this area all the more puzzling is my mom can make anything grow. She would traipse through the woods, recognize and dig up obscure lovely wild flowers, and then transplant them in our wild flower garden back yard. And they thrived.

I even talk to my plants. I encourage them. I told those tomato seedlings how proud of them I was and how we were going to become good friends. They were safe and well cared for in a home with people who loved them.  But, there was that little lapse of not watering them.  Good intentions only get you so far with plants. In the end, they have to be watered.

I want to share a little creativity secret with you. I rarely know what I am going to write about each day, and I draw pictures hoping they might spark an idea. I sat down in between packing for the wedding yesterday and drew the bleak black picture at the top of the blog. I was thinking of the tomato plants I had killed. And then, before I clicked off my iPod, I started adding to the picture. A half hour later, the second picture in this post appeared. It doesn't have to be death. It can be life. So often relationships wither, marriages end, children lose joy and delight in the wonder of life, obstacles defeat rather than strengthen.....

It doesn't have to be that way.

As I am sure Asherel would be pointing out right now if she were writing this, "The Beatles knew that, Mom."
"Of course they did. And how do you know that?"
"Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better...." she would sing.
And that's why so many Beatles' tribute bands end their concerts singing "Hey Jude!"  We all get handed sad songs at one time or another....sometimes we even write them ourselves. Sometimes tomato seedlings die even when we follow all the instructions. Sometimes pictures emerge from the artist's hand bleak and foreboding. We all are hoping it could be different. We could make it better.

Maybe if we just keep at it...water those plants, say a kind word, stroke a lonely hand, hug a hurting soul, draw the leaves that we want to swirl about our hands with hope and life and bathe it all in prayer, maybe we can make the saddest song a little less sad.......

And of course God knows that. That's what the whole book of James is about. Don't let trials defeat you. Don't think Satan wins just because grief and struggle threatens to lay you flat like those tomato plants. This isn't all He wrote. This is just the beginning. Take a sad life and make it better.

I peeked at my tomato plants.The water did not rejuvenate them. I guess only God can raise the dead. But I did scurry off and water my other plants, who were looking a little droopy.

James 1: 2-3
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Psalm 65: 8-9
The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders;
    where morning dawns, where evening fades,
   you call forth songs of joy. You care for the land and water it;
   you enrich it abundantly.
The streams of God are filled with water