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Tending Roses

By Lisa Wingate

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Indian wisdom says our lives are rivers. We are born somewhere small and quiet and we move toward a place we can not see, but only imagine. Along our journey, people and events flow into us, and we are created of everywhere and everyone we have passed. Each event, each person, changes us in some way. Even in times of drought we are still moving and growing, but it is during seasons of rain that we expand the most-- when water flows from all directions, sweeping at terrifying speed, chasing against rocks, spilling over boundaries. These are painful times, but they enable us to carry burdens we could never have imagined.

This I learned from my grandmother, when my life was rushing with torrential speed and hers slowly ebbing into the sea. I think it was God's plan that we come together at this time-- to carry one another's burdens-- to remind ourselves of what we have been and would someday become.

Floods are painful, but they are necessary. They keep us clear and strong. They move our lives onto new paths.

A winter rain was falling the day we drove the potmarked gravel drive to that Missouri farmhouse my great grandparents built on a bluff above Mulberry Creek. As straight as one of the grand porch pillars, and as much a part of the house, Grandma watched as we wound through the rivers of muddy water flowing down the hill. She frowned and wrung her hands as the car tires spun, throwing gravel against the ancient trees along the drive. No doubt she was worried we would damage her prized silver maples.

A sick feeling started in my throat and fell to my stomach like a swallowed ice cube. I looked at Ben in the driver's seat and the baby asleep in the carrier between us. This would probably be the longest December and the worst Christmas of our lives.

It would only be a matter of time before Grandma figured out why we had come, and war broke out. Even now, she was looking at us with mild suspicion, calculating why we were arriving three weeks early for Christmas. She wouldn't be fooled for long into thinking this was just a casual visit. That was just the wishful thinking of a bunch of relatives hoping to postpone the problem of Grandma Rose until they ...

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