Life in the Dead Places: Seeing Through the Dark

There’s a plant hanging from our front porch- a plant, if you can call it that. To anyone else, it looks more like death, decay, forgetfulness, neglect. But while we may not be the most green-thumb-worthy folks in town, this is not actually a case of more foliage-ignoring. It’s a case of life.

What you can’t see when you see all the brown dryness, is the nest snuggled inside, the mama who guards it, the new life hatching.

Every time I pull into our driveway, I wonder what the neighbors think. Why wouldn’t we just take it down? Let it go? And how did we let it get this bad? Maybe they think we’re lazy, negligent, oblivious.

But we’re letting the “tic tacs” (as my 2 year old calls chicks) grow. Letting the Finch Family, as we all call them, have a safe abode and be undisturbed with a flooded nest or tossed away home.

We didn’t kill the plant. We let life come to it.

Instead of growing a plant, we saw the finches take up residence and grow their family in place of it. And now what looks like obvious death is actually hidden life.

Can this be true for me too? For my home, for my family?

For my dead places?

Can there be hidden life?

After all the trauma, all the hurt, all the loss, I just see so many areas of dead spaces. There’s places in my life that just seem like a lost cause, broken beyond repair, withered without hope. Parts of my spirit, parts of my body, parts of my mind seem to scream “colorless”, “damaged”, “barren”.

And next thing I know I’m the passerby criticizing the Gardener.

Did He just forget about her?

Let her go?

Negligent.

Oblivious.

But it hits me as I’m looking at this basket of brown, knowing how it looks to others, knowing what I know about the secret inside:

These dead areas in me may be holding hidden life.

What is God secretly storing in these battered places, patiently waiting for new life to break out of the broken? What is He guarding, growing, gaining for me that will reveal that what looked like utter death was actually greater life?

Can I wait for the Gardener’s hand? Wait and trust that He knows infinitely better than I do what’s really going on, what the full picture is, and what really looks like flourishing? Can I see through the dark long enough to catch the glimpse of life?

What is He guarding, growing, gaining for me that will reveal that what looked like utter death was actually greater life?

There are flowers blooming not far away from where the dead plant basket hangs. They are gorgeous- stunning colors and full petals, and they scream “life, success, vibrancy”! And they can claim it now, but they won’t last long. They wither soon, and death comes to them, and long after that the finches will still sing. Because sometimes the liveliest spaces don’t last long but the growth from hard places endures.

I look around and I see the other spaces, the colorful places and vibrant areas out there and over there. I may not have the same color. I may have dead spaces.

But I can trust that the Gardener is doing something in me that will endure.