Good morning, DearOne.

We have a very special rose bush in my backyard. It stays loaded with yellow blooms from spring through fall. It’s amazing! My cousin gave it to us several years ago when my father-in-law passed away. In June I was walking around fertilizing the flowerbed plants in a broadcast motion just like the YouTube video showed, tripped, and the whole coffee can of fertilizer landed on my rose bush. Every effort I made to clean up wasn’t enough. Branches died off one by one. But, I pruned and watered and babied it and I started talking to it. Even got my sweet baby Liv to sing our version of “Baby Shark” …

“… baby cow, moo moo – moo moo moo – moo”.

Then pruned some more.

It turned a corner.

Began producing blooms again, and it’s going to make it. As a matter of fact, it has tons of buds and blooms again.

It just had to be pruned and loved on.

Jesus tells us that the Father prunes “so that we will be even more fruitful”. I look back on times of loss in my life … could it be that while I was being pruned by the Father, I have so focused on the process (the pain), that I missed that He truly knew what He was doing? How did I miss that He was only removing what was dead? That He was even doing what was best for me at that time? He was in the process of removing all which was no longer purposeful in my life. He was removing the unhealthy. While I lay in the dormant stage for a time, a new branch of my life was waiting to burst forth & bear fruit. He was always at work in my life to make me more beautiful, more productive, more healthy. And it would all be for His glory.

Every woman has a story. Pruning is part of it.

How He has been unfolding these truths this summer has been amazing to me.

I’ve found myself finally appreciating the pruning process. Notice I did not say, “I liked it” but that I appreciated it. I realized that, sure the pruning is for presently in my life, but it is also for what is yet to come. As I allow the Lord to prune from my life the heavy, the unattractive, the strongholds, the unproductive; it is so the future generations of my family will also be productive for Him, walk in integrity, and be healthy spiritually.

“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.”

John 15:2, 5 ESV

Wake up.

See the pruning places.

Go.