April 26, 2010 - Susan Tuten

April 26, 2010

I remember sitting on my great grandmother Martha’s front porch at the old homestead looking out over her beautiful garden. When my family visited we were always gifted with some of her gorgeous flowers and vegetables and some of the scrumptious tea cakes that she made especially for my mother Mary.

Everyone said that Martha “could stick it in the ground and it would grow.” My great grandmother prepared the soil using rich farmyard fertilizer. She knew just when to water and kept the flower garden weed-free. These directions are found on modern day seed packets - and are also excellent instructions for living one’s life and for the raising of children: prepare, plant, nurture and sow.

Reflections of my great grandmother and her garden make me realize how many changes time has wrought and also how very much things have also stayed the same for generations.

My granny’s passion for flowers skipped a generation, and then returned through my mother Mary who passed this love on to me. My most treasured worldly possessions that my mother left to me are her worn out Bibles and secondly, my granny’s rose.

This sweet smelling rose with delicate pink flowers has been divided and moved many times. It has wandered,
put down roots and been passed along more than 100 years by north Louisianans. I moved my rose to my home in Ruston and planted it with care. I expected it to be firmly planted there where I had chosen to raise my family and to spend my life.

My rose and my future plans were up-rooted and my heirloom rose and I moved and made our home in Natchitoches, Louisiana. I was a stranger there but First United Methodist Church saints James and Reta Poole took me in. They helped me to get settled and my rose and I found a sanctuary in a new church and community of friends that I grew to love.

The rose and I weathered many hardships, but we survived. I shared the rose with new friends. The delicate pink rose buds decorated many events and meals at First United Methodist in Natchitoches. It learned to thrive in a different garden. George Bernard Shaw wrote the “The best place to seek God is in the garden. You can dig for Him there.”

Just when I felt really settled, circumstances warranted my return to my home in Ruston. In some ways this was a journey to Nineveh for me. God always has better plans for me than my human eye can see. The rose and I have settled back into this beautiful north Louisiana town once again. God’s blessings are abundant in treasured old and new friendships.

I have always known that I was a child of the King. My mother taught me that. My brothers and sister and I literally grew up at church. She left her lifetime notes in the margins of her Bibles. I have had many and too few worldly resources in my lifetime. I can affirm that “things” sought after and attained never belong to me. They become truly mine when I pass them on.

Please visit my garden and allow me to share my granny’s rose and steadfast scripture with you:

“God will raise you up on eagle’s wings
bear you on the breath of dawn.
Make you to shine like the Son
and hold you in the palm of His hand.”
Isaiah 40

Grace and Peace
Susan Tuten