It’s been quite a surprise to find the azalea bush on the side of our house suddenly blooming over these last few weeks. Up until this year it has always behaved like the standard azalea that it is, and bloomed in the early spring only. I don’t know if this summer it just started to get jealous of all the blooms on the hydrangea bush next to it or what, but here in the hottest stretch of the summer, it’s been blooming away!
It’s a fun thing to catch garden plants doing unexpected things – especially blooming – at unexpected times. And whenever I see flowers blooming out of season, I think of Rayna.
Anyone who knows me well has heard this story (probably several times), but it still is very meaningful to me and I ponder it often. When I was pregnant with Rayna, we bought an Easter lily in her honor from our church, brought it home and planted it in our garden, where it promptly looked dead. Then, very strangely, it started to grow over the summer, and the week Rayna was born (in August) it bloomed again!
As the months went by after Rayna’s birth, and it became clear that she was missing several developmental milestones, that story about the Lily kept coming back to me, as if God was telling me that this child was on her own timetable, and would bloom in her own season. And He was definitely right!
She is still on her own timetable, and much as that frustrates me at times, I am very thankful. It is a beautiful thing to see her bloom whenever she finally chooses to. The first time she finally walked, the first time she said “Mama,” the first time she dressed herself – all were events to be celebrated and I appreciated them far more than if she had done them when the books all said she “should."
But it’s something I have to remind myself often – that it’s good she develops when she does. Sometimes my pride is in such a rush. It’s been hard over the years to have hundreds of strangers come up to us on playgrounds, at church, or wherever, and try to guess her age (why do people always feel like they need to do that?) and to have them always guess way below her actual age. It’s hard to sit at gymnastics class and watch her be the one who can’t do a lot of the activities. It’s hard to watch her in children’s church be the one who doesn’t understand what she’s supposed to do. But then I have to realize most of the difficulty for me stems from my own pride. Rayna is the happiest child I’ve ever met, so how can I want anything different from, or for, her?
Plus, she makes me smile thousands of times a day. Yes, she knows how to dress herself now, but she has gotten to the point where she tries to make her clothes “match” – and to her this only means black shirt with black skirt, or blue shirt with blue pants, etc. My little monochrome girl. And she gets excited about everyone and everything… “What? We’re having brussel sprouts for dinner?? You’re kidding me! Thanks, Mom!” Her enthusiasm is hard to beat.
So, while the waiting seasons are hard…. waiting for her to ride a 2-wheel bike, waiting for her to read, waiting for her to understand even the first concepts about math… I know that the eventual blooming is always worth it. Just like my azalea in August, her timing is unexpected, and beautiful.
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