Life is Like a Lilac Bush

Six years ago, in the spring, I planted two lilac bushes in the front garden of our new Kentucky home. They were small bushes – I don’t have the money to buy full grown plants, and besides, part of the joy of gardening is watching how things grow and develop.

I have always loved lilacs. In my childhood home we had an exceptionally healthy one in our back garden that formed the basis of many of my homespun fairy tales. Those gorgeous blooms formed at the terminal bud of every branch, it seemed, and they exuded such an intoxicating perfume it was almost overwhelming. And even as a child I used to marvel at how dependable they were. In the spring of every year the shrub would burst into bloom and fill the air with its perfume. Every year I would spin stories about the fairies that lived in the splendor of the lilac bush.

But over here in Kentucky I waited year after year to see a single bloom on my two precious shrubs.

At year four I started threatening them. “I’ll give you one more year and if you don’t bloom next year, I’m ripping you out!”

Two more years went by, and I didn’t have the heart to do anything so drastic to plants that were just doing their best! Finally, this year, there are five blooms on one of the bushes!  It’s a start, and I am thrilled! I am probably happier about those five blooms that I have had to wait for all these years than I would have been if it had flowered every year since it was planted.  

And life is like that, I think. We do not value the things that come easily to us nearly as much as the things we have to work for or wait for.

The relationship between Aethelreda and Paulos was precious precisely because they did not wake up every morning in each other’s arms.  I could have written the plot that way. Some people may have preferred it if I had. Augustus makes the decision to leave the monastery and remain with Sigrid. He is no less honorable than Paulos. But for Aethelreda and Paulos, their mutual hope for what the future might hold was what kept them alive. They never stopped hoping and they never stopped believing that there would be something beyond this life where all their dreams would be fulfilled.