The Colors of Fall

Nate and I visited Nathaniel's grave on Friday night, as that day was the two week mark of his birth. I thought about going out there all day as I worked and whenever I had Nate on the phone I reminded him about our plans. I'm sure it was eating at me in a weird way, but I didn't immediately feel sorrowful or upset. I had to work on my BSF study for Saturday morning so I spent the afternoon by the fire with coffee, working away.

I got frustrated with the study, though...I spent an hour reading the notes on the wrong one and then had to start all over again reading the right study. Argh. That frustration with the notes led into being frustrated with the study itself-I kept getting mad and confused at the questions. And I was distracted! Knowing all these medical bills are going to start descending on us soon, combined with the death of my Volvo in another 20,000 miles and the subsequent need to buy a different car, I was not completely focused. So it was 4 hours or so before I finished what takes me on any other day 1.5 hours. As time went on I had to work faster so that I could be done by the time Nate arrived home from work. As I was rushing through the study, I kept thinking about my strong desire to take flowers to Nathaniel's grave, but how that costs money. (I'd thrown out all of the dead bouquets from our house earlier in the day, so we couldn't reuse any of those flowers, and who would want to anyway!) We have a change jar which is holding the start of our savings for our early summer trip to Alaska in 2008, so I pulled some quarters from that to buy flowers at New Seasons.

For Nathaniel's funeral I had carried a bouquet from New Seasons. When the assistant manager of the flower department found us in there panicked about which flowers to coordinate for the bouquet, she immediately took over and gave us about $75 in flowers for our $25 budget. She knew that we were headed to the funeral of our son and so she said it was her gift to us. When we arrived back at the floral department on Friday night, she was in there again. Nate and I each picked out a rose and asked her if we could wrap them up before paying for them since they were dripping wet. She asked if we needed water and I told her no, they're headed to where they need to be right now. She took the roses, wrapped them up beautifully, handed them back to us, and told us again that they were her gift to us.

When we got back into the car I began sobbing. I kept looking at the roses and seeing a special blessing from God. I felt His message of provision and control. He has us wrapped up in His arms and He's going to make things come together in ways we can't imagine. I look at the blessings I've already experienced through Nathaniel Micheal, and can only wonder at the blessings on other people that I don't see. God's at work in this, I know it, and I know that He's not leaving us out to dry. Those roses represented a promise to me of hope. One was deep red and the other was bright, fallish orange. Past and future. It's all going to come together!