One thing we love about being part of the Vineyard church we attend is that we host a home group. Basically, a weekly gathering of friends where we can more informally talk, laugh, cry and just be ourselves.
With a house overrun with boys, cleaning and getting ready every Wednesday night is no easy task for my beloved other. Usually, around 5:00, I'm frantically pitching to finish things up, which almost always includes sweeping the porch and walkway up to our little house. Last week, I began to notice a trend. We (meaning, my beautiful and ravishing bride) have a collection of dead plants on our porch. Not dying. Not "wow, this one's looking pretty ragged". Not just seen better days. Dead. For the sake of reference, here is (part of) the current murdered row I found on our porch:
Along with the always impossible-to-keep-alive orchid...
So, I asked her.
And the response was everything I could have already predicted after 20 years together and nearly 16 years of wedded bliss; a combo platter of thrift and eternal optimism. Thrift, because so many of the pots are "too cute to discard" mixed with "Do you know how much I paid for that plant because I loved the pot so much?"
And eternal optimism that someway, somehow, the deceased plant will pull through and eventually make it. You know what? I get it. I totally do. She's an optimistic chick, somehow always discovering and discerning the good stuff. I actually am, too, which is probably why we are so MFEO. If you know us well, we may sometimes irritate you with our collective positive vibe, but we can't really help it...we are wired to hope. We cannot help but expect awesome.
Is it always awesome? Are things always incredible? Not really, if we honestly examine circumstance. But, there's always hope. And a healthy dose of hope can make just about anything pretty awesome. With all that said, the almost/nearly/as-door-nails dead plants still sit on our porch, left alone, biding their time, expectant. Full of promise, potential and armed with a super-sized heaping of hope.
