If a woman arranges flowers for a living, she earns our congratulations even if she doesn't do anything else either because she doesn't know how or because she is too busy at her flower shop. If a woman cooks fine Italian meals for a living- if her gnocchi, with their wonderful hundreds of calories, are famous all over town- we sing her praises, even if when she gets home she is spent... But if a woman, because she is well versed in all the household arts, can do all these things and in fact does them for the people she loves and for those she welcomes into her home... we shake our heads and say she has wasted her talents.

-Esolen, Out of the Ashes

We made a flower arrangement with some of the hydrangeas from the bushes in our yard. As you can see, the flowers vary in color from green to white to blue to purple.

When I was getting married to Dwayne, I wanted nothing more than a bouquet of big, beautiful, blue hydrangeas.  But I was ordering my bouquet in February for a wedding in April in South Carolina and I remember that the florist said, "They may be hard to find. And if I find them, they may not be in season. And if they are available, they may only be green."

I remembered the disappointed I felt over that bouquet.  It was beautiful, after all, but it was assortment of other flowers, and it had only one or two very small, green hydrangeas in the mix.

But as I was cutting these blooms off our trees outside, I felt the Holy Spirit address that bitter disappointment with a gentle astringent. I thought I heard the voice of God say this or something like it, "You wanted so much so fast back then. But marriage and life doesn't work that way.  It took twenty years, but now see how many blooms you have. Your trees are falling over with blooms."