Your Winter Is Over

Today's post is a little unusual, so bear with me. If you get to a point that you feel it's not for you, you are most welcome to go make some tea and carry on with your life, or move on to the next blog. I won't be offended in the slightest. Promise.

I decided to move our Allamanda from one side of the garden to the other. We'll be building a garage sometime and that bed will be abandoned. (You can read the tragic saga of our ensuite garage here.) I love my Allamanda with its bright happy trumpets, I couldn't bear the thought of giving up on it. We planted it way back when we first moved in, so it's pretty much part of the family. You know, that part that lives in the garden and doesn't come in for meals. Surely every family has one? Many years of happy growth means it was broadly spread on top and underneath the soil. I needed to move this rather large plant by myself, and the only way to do it, was to chop back the top and the roots quite harshly.  

I know what all the books say about transplanting - take all the roots with, dig a square 1m x 1m and so on. I'm a girl. I can only do so much and, in faith, I did. For weeks, seven to be precise - not that I'm counting - there was every indication that I had committed vicious planticide. The severely hacked branches looked good for only one thing - firewood. BUT! At the beginning of this week, I went over to have a look... and it was sprouting! Vibrant green life peeping through the seemingly dead wood. I won't lie. I nearly hugged my little plant.

Why am I telling you this? You see, that first day when I started hacking my plant in preparation for the move, I felt God whisper to me that this action was significant. I'm learning to listen when He whispers, He often says the most important things in a whisper. This is what I believe He was saying...

You may feel as if your life has been severely chopped back. Things have been stripped away from you, top and bottom. You've been in a place of fruitlessness with no sign of any life or progress.

That season is over. You have been moved to a different place - not one doomed for destruction and abandonment, but a place of growth and fruitfulness. A place of LIFE. For a time there was no visible evidence of His working inside of you, in your life - but now its bursting through the seams in glorious technicolor!

No more dry, dead bark.

Now green shoots and bright flowers.

Welcome to Spring!

Dianne J. Wilson writes novels from her hometown in East London, South Africa, where she lives with her husband and three daughters. She has just signed a three book contract for a YA series, Spirit Walker, with Pelican / Watershed.

Finding Mia is available from Amazon, Pelican / Harbourlight, Barnes & Noble and other bookstores.

Shackles is available as a free ebook from Amazon& Smashwords.

Find her on Facebook, Twitter and her sporadic blog Doodles.