having faith

Every day, Nate asks if he has a flower yet. He cradles the little plastic dixie cup in his hands and watches while I water oh so carefully.

And as a mom my heart aches, because chances are slim that anything will grow. "He would only do one seed" said the woman when I picked up Nate. One seed. Barely a hope. Then getting into the car he held the cup just a little too tight and some soil toppled out. Was the seed with it? Who knows. And so when my son peers into the murky soil, looking for life, I try to think of how to tell him that sometimes we are just dealt a short hand. Sometimes no matter how much we water, a flower just can't grow. I consider telling him that the value is in the watering, in the tender care, in the patience. That the flower at the end is not the only reward, and that not everything can be a flower. I consider running out and buying a new packet of seeds so that I can stack the deck back in our favor. I get angry at the cup for not being what my child wants it to be and then I get angry with myself for wanting that cup to be anything but what it is.

So in the end, I let the seed do what it is supposed to do- teach us to have faith.

I would love to say that just this moment I saw the first little shoot poking its way out of the soil, but this is not that kind of blog, and that is not the hand we were dealt. But we are going to continue to water that one seed that may or may not be there, and we are going to have faith that whether or not a flower grows all will be alright.