Sitting on my porch early one Saturday morning my mom and dad pulled up in my yard on his old truck with a gift. When I walked out to meet them I saw what it was, a small lemon sapling. I love working in the yard with my hands in the dirt. There is just something very therapeutic about that connection for me. I had been looking for one for a while, and they just happen to come across one earlier that morning while they had been out. So we dug a deep hole and planted the sapling where I could watch it grow. As months turned into year and a half, I finally got a return on all the hard work. A big beautiful lemon tree that could barely stand due to the weight of the lemons! We would have so many lemons we’d have to give them away! It stood about 5 feet tall, and I looked forward to the white blossoms every spring. When winter would come I would always take precautions for the weather and make sure it was covered at the right times.

I live in a very small southern town where normally winters aren’t that bad. The term“cold weather” is a few nights freezing once and a while where you need to leave a faucet dripping at best. The winter of 2014 was a really cold one for us. Also in January of that year there was a big rain with a hard freeze to follow. I covered the tree and provided a heating lamp to insure that it wouldn’t get too cold. Everything in our little town was frozen for about two days. It was miserable weather for people in the South, many had never dealt with those kinds of temperatures. As the weather started to change I started to notice small changes with the tree. At first, just a couple of leaves crinkled a little.. I was so hopeful that it was just minor damage and it would pull through, but each day was a little worse. It wasn’t long before I knew the tree had frozen and had died.

I know it sounds silly, but I really loved that tree. The love came from working with my own hands in the soil, watching it make beautiful fruit, and realizing it was a gift from my parents. I was so disappointed as it just stood in the front yard dead and limbs breaking off with the breeze. My best efforts were just not good enough! I really tried to save it. Now I was just angry! So while working in the yard one morning I just tore up the rest (what didn’t break off in my hands) and threw it in the brush pile. I tried everything I knew to do, but ultimately I just was done. I even cried when I carried it to the brush pile. After that day, and the days to come, the bare spot was finally filled in with new grass.

How often have you poured everything you have into people and they break your heart? Watched them grow physically or spiritually, and then “Winter” comes and it seems they didn’t make it. It says in Proverbs 13:12 Hope deferred makes the heart sick… Oh that is so true! How many times have you prayed for an answer and it felt as if God was a million miles away? You feel as if you have worked with this person, helped them, supported them, got your hands messy in their life to only end up disappointed. I do believe hope deferred is a most crushing feeling. As time went on, I didn’t think so much about the tree. I planted more flowers in different places and kinda forgot about the tree. Summer and winter came, and then spring.

Pulling up in my yard one late afternoon, my headlights shined across the yard and I noticed something in the grass. I was a little put out because I mowed earlier that day and thought I missed a spot, but I went on in. The next morning getting into my car I noticed it a again, but it wasn’t just a weed I missed from mowing. This time I walked out there to check it out. I don’t think I will ever forget walking up to the spot and just standing there in disbelief. It was a sprout! A sprout of a lemon tree! I couldn’t believe it, that lemon tree was dead, and I had even tore the rest of it up.. I got mad, frustrated and gave up not realizing this one thing. A seed remained. I was so happy I went in the house and got my husband and made him come look too. He was thinking what most people would, “what’s the big deal?” But to me it was a big deal. That was life! There had been life there the whole time, even after the tree froze, the limbs fell off, and the remaining branches were tore apart. That’s amazing to me! There was still life after the harshest of conditions.

I pray we keep this in mind when dealing with others who are battling disappointment, hurts, pain, feelings of hopelessness, I pray we see the good in their lives. Remember, every time we mention Jesus a seed is being planted. Every time the gospel is shared a seed is planted. I was raised in the belief that words plant seeds in your life; words speak life to people. Tell them about Jesus, tell them there is hope, tell them that if the Lord allows, the sun will rise tomorrow. Tell them that even in the worst pain, if there is breath, there is hope. Life is harsh, sometimes its more than we can carry. “Winters” are brutal, people are like us and are broken too, they will break you and disappointment will come. Life at times tries its very best to tear us up from the roots.

It is up to Jesus to wake that seed up, but it is up to us to water that seed! Jesus doesn’t see people like we do. We see failure after failure. He sees a seed, a life, a child. There is absolutely nothing like new life. That lemon tree now stands close to 10 feet tall and once again has lemons on it. It survived when I gave up and lost hope. It survived and is doing well, actually better than before. The rest of the verse says the Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life Proverbs 13:12…. A tree of life..That’s something to think about when we are at our wits end and life is pulling with everything it has… It all started with a seed. Thanks be to Jesus, he has never given up on me!