I Pray

Every morning I get up, make the coffee and sit at my kitchen table and pray. The first thing I ask is for forgiveness. My prayers are simple. Mostly I just ask for the strength to be a better wife, mother and human being. Mostly, I ask to be forgiven. Like a mantra, I say, "Lord, please forgive me, please forgive me, please, forgive me. For the rest of the day, I try very hard to forgive myself.
I sat down this morning and began my ritual and I realized that Sunday is Easter. "Holy sh*t!" I said in my head. I had not realized that another holiday, or Holy day had sneaked up on me. I have not been to the store. There are no signs of Easter having been drug down from the attic. There are no signs of anything but the remainder of our eight month renovation. As the idea of allowing another holiday to come and go with a half-assed effort on my part, I felt the guilt and shame of not being prepared for the family hit me square on my head. I laid my head down on the kitchen table and cried. The pressure of all that has happened to me and my family took all the room in my heart and left me feeling completely sad. I cried because I am re-doing a house I will not get to live in. I cried because I am positively exhausted. I cried for all the things that have happened to my kids in the last six months, that in order to protect their privacy, I will not write. I cried for all the weak, fearful moments when I am sure nothing will work out and I will have forced my family to live in a cardboard box, all because I wanted to try and live a dream that may not be "realistic" anymore. I cried until I had not one more drop of water in me.
I believe in signs from my God. I hear the cynics, who think I am naive and insipid for thinking that a greater being is listening to anything I say. But my faith is always bigger than my skepticism. I have seen miracles that came from dust. I have witnessed the grace on a persons face at the end of their life, when they have felt the hand of God lead them home. I believe, because I have seen things that science and logic could not produce. I believe because even when things are going horribly wrong, I am always given a single moment of grace that shows me my faith in God, although not an easy road, is a rich and fulfilling one that will lead me to being a better human in this world I live in.
There have been no Easter miracles this season for me. No magic eggs cooked and dyed themselves. The freezer didn't magically produce a ham for dinner. The calendar didn't jump off the wall and smack me in the face to remind me that, ready or not, Easter is two days away. My miracles have never come that way. The things that remind me that the world is not about me or my selfish want to be perfect, are of nature, beauty and heart.
Houston suffered from a harsh winter this year. Now, before you Northerners start to snicker at us and our unusually cold temperatures, please, be kind and remember we are not set up for any of this. Hot we do with ease, but cold and snow throws us into a complete tizzy. Our houses are set up for the dog days of summer. We have temperatures that would make you weep like a child. We all lost thousands of dollars in landscaping. Pipes burst, roads were damaged, but the plants suffered most of all. Most of us have zone 9 tropical plants. My hibiscus bushes are brown and brittle. My palms got singed and then there was the greatest loss of all for me.
I had gotten a coveted tree from Argentina from a dear friend of ours. It was an Argentinian silk floss tree. It's nickname is the drunk tree because it's branches stick straight out and go every which way. I got the tree because it was tropical and could with stand our Houston summers of 106 heat index with 90% humidity. I had been homesick for fall and fall colors. I wanted something in my yard to change with the seasons. My Argentinian tree was to bloom in the fall with big beautiful pink blossoms. It was young standing only at six feet tall, but it was statuesque and I could hardly wait for it to grow. The tree's entire trunk was an olive green with large spiky thorns that covered the base. I loved that tree. It was one more thing that my Michael had gotten for me to make me happy. And it did.
My tree died this winter. They are rare and I am not sure I will get the opportunity to own another one in my lifetime. We had planned to take it with us to the next house. I have not dug up the corpse of my dead tree yet. I was still hoping that something, anything would save my beloved tree. There are no signs of life and on the last day before we sign the contract I will dig up my deceased tree and let it go. In the mean time, I have watched most of our landscape struggle to survive. What we had spent years cultivating and tending is mostly shriveled and dead. It would take approximately two thousand dollars to recoup what we lost. We have neither the time nor the money to fix what has been broken.
One morning this past week I had gone outside in the morning to check on another young tree, our tangelo tree and see how it is doing. Much to my surprise it, standing only three feet tall, it was covered in blooms. It has three times as many blooms this year as last. I was shocked it was thriving. I walked to the front and viewed our flower beds that used to be lush, full, green beds with flowering bushes and vines. It is full of brown twigs and dead leaves. I brushed away the leaves and saw the wisteria vine on my trellis had tiny buds on it's twisted trunk and then I looked up. Above my head were beautiful lavender and purple blooms, tons of them coming out of the loquat tree, over the trellis and near the ground by the trunk. I was gobsmacked at the amount of blooms it produced this year. The smell is simple divine. I stood under the trellis for ten minutes just taking it all in. I felt giddy, even a little drunk, on the perfume from my surviving vine. That is the moment I felt my sign. Not everybody gets to survive the winters of life. Not every person, plant and animal has the strength to continue after they have been frozen out, but I do. I have survived lots of winters and ended up blooming twice as much as before. I have grown so much because of my personal winters and would not be the person I am today without them. Adversity builds character, strength and compassion. So even though I forgot it was Easter, I believe the miracle is that I get the chance to keep growing, keep reaching and keep praying that tomorrow I will have the chance to be better.