The rosebush

My mom has a rose garden with about 30 different types of roses. When it is in full bloom, it is a wondrous sight. It is now my job to prune the roses. My dad taught me how to prune roses when I was very young. With finishing school and...stuff...it has taken a few weeks to get the 30+ rosebushes pruned. I have 1 rose left, and it's a doozy. There have got to be at least 1,000 (yes, that's one thousand!) thorns on each branch! In fact, at least 10 of the roses out there have the same amount of thorns-there is absolutely no way to grab a branch without getting stuck! This last rosebush-I just got tired of fighting with it today...I'll finish it tomorrow. It's a toughie, yes it is.

With pruning roses, there are so many life metaphors you and I could come up with, I'm sure. Especially with the thorns of life-getting through tough stuff...getting hurt...knowing we have to just get through it. I'm sure there's more...

As I was pruning today, I looked at the clippers as I clipped the branches just above the buds, or to cut off a dead branch, and thought about the season that rose is in right now. It was once blooming, in so many different directions, but I had to decide where to cut and prune, which direction would be good for it to grow in, and which way to keep it from growing in, and where it had to just stop because that part was done. It was up to me to prune in such a way that it would grow the right direction or to grow to its best ability and be beautiful. If I didn't prune, the rosebushes would grow wild. The blooms would be beautiful, but eventually the thorns, branches and wild mess would take away from the beauty of the roses.

Now before you freak out, please keep in mind that I don't see myself as God. I see myself as the rosebush. God, in His perfect timing, is the one doing the pruning. Life is about living, growing, dying-and getting pruned and trusting God that where He prunes us, we will grow and be even more beautiful than we were before. Sometimes those clippers prune and it hurts, deeply. Sometimes so deeply we deaden that area in our lives and we think it's easier that way. But then...we just become a stump, with no blooms. I don't know about you, but I can't live like that. So, hopefully we recognize the buds that God has left and let the healing and growing process begin. That is where we need to trust God. And trust others. Yes, the scars are there, but the roses, I mean we, can be all the more beautiful while we live, grow and trust.

Oh that's a toughie, isn't it?

Look, all I know is that while I was pruning the last rosebushes today, I was praying, asking God to heal where I have been clipped and to help me grow. I looked at those rosebushes and imagined what they will look like in the spring. The new buds and the beautiful colors and smells. They will be better because of my pruning. I prayed for my family and friends and in how many ways we have been clipped this year and are hurting. I literally asked God why He was clipping at us so much. I begged Him to please stop pruning. Then I asked God to please comfort and heal. Right now, all I can do is trust God's pruning, that He knows what's best.

Oh, that's a toughie, isn't it?

My dad

If you knew my dad, you knew his strengths: builder, fixer, doer.

Today would have been my dad's 70th birthday. This is our first Christmas without him. I have been debating whether or not to post a new blog in honor of my dad, considering I did write something 6 months ago, when he passed away and I didn't want to re-hash or over-mourn, or focus on things that I shouldn't focus on today, but I have memories of my dad that I just thought important to share-to give you a more personal glimpse of my dad, maybe you'll learn something about him you didn't know. My dad would throw a fit if he knew about all the attention he still gets, but I would argue that the honor bestowed on him just feels right to me, to all of us. We, or I, need to shareabout my dad. This makes the "growing through the rain" process easier for me.

Let's begin with a few random facts about my dad:

1) He was my Grandma Mary's first born. She gave birth to him at home, in Costa Mesa.
2) When he was 11, he made a Nativity scene out of wood-one of his first wood-working projects. My Grandma still has it-it's beautiful.
3) When he was in high school, He sang in choir and performed in the musical "The Pirates of Penzance." He even wore tights.

Now something more personal that I've been wanting to share. He was-well, for lack of a better way of describing him-a manly man. He learned to be tender-hearted, but he was tough. Don't get me wrong, all of four of us kids agree he was a great and wonderful dad, but he was a tough dad. I am his oldest child. This manly man would pick me up when I would fall or scrape my knee. He'd tell me to wipe my tears, brush it off and get back to whatever I was doing. He taught me to be tough and strong, just like him.

Fast forward many years and I was raising my own little girl. We had a family gathering at my folks home. My daughter, Jennifer, had fallen, or something like that, and began crying. I immediately patted her, told her to brush it off, and walked away. My dad went to her, picked her up, placed her in his lap and let her cry. Oh, my anger just blew! I let it out on my dad: "What are you doing! You never let me cry when I was little! You told me to be tough and get over it! Stop!"He waited a minute, put Jennifer down, walked over to me, hugged me and said: "You're right Paula, I did raise you to be tough, but you know what, I was wrong, and I'm sorry." I cried, of course, and he held me. That was the first of many times throughout the years that he held me as I cried.

This experience was one of those privileged moments I had of watching God work on my dad's heart. I even remember when Dad accepted Christ. He was still a doer, but he built, fixed, and did things for a different reason than before. Christmas was, I think, his favorite time of year. We celebrated his birthday with cake, and extra presents, as he'd admonish us for taking the time to do so, because we should be only celebrating Jesus' birth. But then he would always make sure we would remember to hug and kiss him and wish him Happy Birthday. He loved his family, but more importantly, He loved Jesus. Serving Jesus, and sharing God's love was the most important, single priority in his life.

So, in this time of remembering my dad, and the life we had with him, also remember that it was because of Jesus' birth, death and resurrection and the impact it had on my dad's life, and the impact it should have on all of our lives. Build, fix, do.

Do.

27 Books Later...

Even in comparison to my 3 semesters of brain exploding math, this semester has so far been the most difficult. Not so much because of the 27 books (I'm an English major, I love books), but more so just because of...life...and death...and illness...and health...life. At one point I dropped a class, but another professor added a book, so it was still 27 books. If life isn't overwhelming enough, you'd think 27 books would just add to that. It did. It felt like my brain was just going non-stop, no rest for...oh my goodness...more than six months. (word of advice: DON'T ever do 10 weeks of summer school!)

BUT I've decided to focus on the best part of the 27 books: The stuff I loved reading and what I learned. So, of the 27 books, here's a list of my favorites and what I've learned:

Beowulf: If you haven't read this, your life isn't complete. It is eloquent, tedious, full of wonderful history and detail, the heroic code, with monsters and dragons. My essay prompt was to describe the heroic code in Beowulf, and I compared my son's video games to the book. Did you know that J.R.R. Tolkien worked on the translation? By the way-the book is way better than the movie.

Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet: we all know how it ends. This is the first time I had read it. I love Shakespeare, he's all about the process and the details. You can get lost in his stories. I also read The Tempest-that was amazing! In the end, Prospero ends up forgiving everyone-no revenge-and the boy and girl live happily ever after.

Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe: I'm still reading it. It's a long book, with just tons of stuff going on. Stowe uses strong female characters, and wonderful Tom, to tell a story about slavery, the North and the South and American History. This book has made me feel ashamed of not only our American History, but also ashamed of how we humans, all equal creations of God, exact superiority and power over one another, over those who we deem as unworthy.

To His Coy Mistress by Andrew Marvel: You know, I don't even like poetry, but this poem just cracked me up! This poem is the epitome of what a guy will say to seduce a girl. I enjoyed it so much I wrote an essay on it. Everyone will tell you that this poem is all about "carpe diem" or "seize the day." Eh, whatever.  I don't think that was Marvel's intention when he wrote it. I think he just knew what to say to get lucky.

The Dream of the Rood: an ancient poem about Christ's crucifixion from the perspective of the cross. It is powerful! The professor gave us a passage from the Gospels to compare the poem to, which gave me the opportunity to discuss it with a fellow classmate who had never even opened a bible before-it was such a blessing! Read it, you'll cry.

27 books later, I am ecstatic to finally have a break. I've been sleeping better, and I feel like this humongous weight has been lifted off of my brain. I even watched the movie "27 Dresses" thinking maybe there's some comparison with my 27 books I could blog about. Nope, I don't want to think that hard.

Besides, I need to prepare for next semester: 16 books.