More than you can Dream

When we first moved into our house, there was a lovely row of mature cottonwood trees just behind our fenceline. These trees were one of our favorite things about our backyard. In the summer heat, the backyard was a good 15 degrees cooler than the front, and the shade was perfect for our little daughters playing on a hot summer day. We loved to sit outside and hear the rustle of the leaves in the breeze.

One day I came home to hear loud sawing noises from behind our house. I looked out the upstairs window, and saw that there was a crew of men methodically sawing down each tree behind our fence, until nothing was left but stumps. I broke into tears, and cried on and off for days.

Our once-pleasant backyard was now glaringly bright and hot, with no shelter from the sun. I couldn't understand why anyone would get rid of such wonderful trees, and there was nothing I could do about it.

But...

What we didn't know was that many of the trees and shrubs in our own yard had their growth stifled by all that lovely shade. Grapevines had gone years without growing more than a couple inches. With all the sunlight in the yard now, everything started to grow like crazy.

The grapevines shot up and over the slatted wood patio cover, covering the top completely, and produced a nice little grape harvest. The butterfly bush grew to immense proportions, leaning over at just the right angle to shade our porch swing. My favorite rose bushes produced the most gorgeous pink-and-white roses. And most delightful of all, a little cottonwood shoot from the tree stump made its way under the fence to our yard, where it grew like crazy, just in time for our growing daughters to have their own climbing tree. Our yard is shady once again, but this time from our own trees.

We spend lots of time in the yard now. The girls climb up our tree almost every day, hiding high up in the leaves, and my husband and I spend hours sitting in our porch swing, enjoying the shade and the rushing sound of the leaves and the mottled light dappling the ground.

I feel God so much in this gift. God wants more for us than to admire the beauty in someone else's garden; he wants to give us a garden of our own, to tend and to love. And he can take a loss and turn it into something better than we could dream.

God, thank you so much for the sweet gifts you give. Though sometimes losing things is painful and confusing, your hand is in the goodness that comes afterwards. Help me to trust you more during the difficult times, and rest in the assurance that  you cause all things to work for good, and that you answer prayer beyond what we can dream.