After all the hours my girls and I have spent patiently watering, planting, and pulling weeds these past weeks, I went out this morning to walk around and check my flowers as I usually do, and saw......no roses. OR buds. On any of the 14 rosebushes. Only little stems which had the flowers neatly nipped off of them and tiny deer hoofprints in my garden. I was so upset! Nearly cried and walked around muttering about the 'blasted deer'. I've already been researching what I can use to repel deer to keep our pretty garden safe from future damage. 

The upsettedness over this seems silly considering the heavy things we've been dealing with the past few days (the sudden death of a little one in our base community, the memorial service), but in a way it all relates (to my mind anyway).

We spend so much time tending our own 'gardens', patiently watching and hoping for signs of growth in our young ones. We pray and wait. Many times we're blessed to see tender shoots and flowers coming forth. Other times our hopes and dreams are nipped off painfully and unexpectedly, through circumstances, bad choices, illness and even death. Thankfully, unlike with my garden, in real life, we have a true Master Gardener tending us. He knows exactly when we need fertilizer, and even moreso, when it's time for pruning. If it were up to me, my garden would never get cut back. It's too painful.  How thankful it makes me to know His pruning is never without a purpose.

John 15:1"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. " and

5"I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing"

How I need this reminder. So often I act as though it were all up to me and what I can accomplish instead of remembering that everything and everyone I love in my life is being tended by the Gardener Himself.