Consider the Lilies

The past few days I have been considering the lilies of my life. Last year I planted a lot of bulbs, it was somewhere between 50 and 75, Day Lilies and Gladiolas. I planted them because I wanted beautiful flowers, and sure enough, I got beautiful flowers. As the season ended and fall and winter set in I took comfort in the fact that deep within the ground, my little bulbs would split and prepare for the new year and sometime in the late spring or early summer I would see yet another, and hopefully larger, crop of beautiful flowers. Well the bad news came from the Home Owners Association that all of the flower beds needed to be regraded to help prevent water damage, and during the process all bulbs and plants not approved or originally planted by the HOA would be removed. So a month ago I tried my best to dig up my already growing flowers and transplant them into planters. Well it seems to have worked for many of the lilies, they started blooming this week and they make me smile. The verdict is still out on the poor gladiolas- they have turned brown, for some reason, I don't think that is a good sign.

So this week I have been loving my lilies, and because of them I have been singing the song "Consider the Lilies" to my self quite often. God has created so many beautiful things.

Thinking back on last year at this time, my beautiful flowers got me through many days, when life just wasn't working out the way I thought it should. I really felt like these flowers were a special gift to me from my heavenly father, telling me that I could help him make the world a little more beautiful, even if it wasn't quite the way I had wanted to help. You see, last year I was really questioning why I hadn't been blessed to have a baby, to help make the world more wonderful in that way.

I now know, and even somewhat understand, that it just wasn't time for me to start my garden of children. The perfect time to start that garden was this March, when this sweet little baby was born. As you can see he is definitely blooming and bringing joy and beauty into my life as never before. This sweet angel gives new meaning to the beautiful song I have been singing to myself, near the end it says "Consider the sweet tender children who must suffer on this earth, the pains of all of them he carried from the day of his birth. He clothes the lilies of the field, he feeds the lambs of his fold, and he will heal those who trust him, and make their hearts as gold". I believe this too be true, I know it is true, that I have a Savior, that just as he has created and loves and watches over this beautiful world and its beautiful flowers, he loves and watches over me and my dear husband and sweet little baby. In this life we all suffer, internally we feel emotional pain and anguish caused by our own actions or the actions of others, externally we feel physical pain from many sources. But our Savior knows and understands our pains, each and every one. I know that he can and will heal us if we seek to be healed and trust him and do what he asks us to do. I know because I have felt that healing. I want all those that I love to know this too. I am so thankful that I was given the chance to wait over a year past the time I had planned to start my family, because it gave me the opportunity to once again seek my Saviors help to heal my pain, he told me then that all would be OK, and WOW- Is it. Lets look at this sweet tender child one last time.

OK, Maybe two more times......

And I will end with one more lily, I hope that we all can find something beatiful in the world today, something that whispers to us just how much God loves us, something that helps us remeber what our Savior has done for us. Then I hope that we smile and say a prayer of thanks for that sweet blessing.