Waiting for Blooming

The tree we planted out front last autumn with the last of Dad's ashes and dedicated to his memory has yet to burst forth in bloom this spring.  How long should I be waiting before getting worried about the "Dad tree" making it through its first winter?

I didn't think I had to worry about it getting enough water through the winter; with all the snows we had, the south lawn was very well moistened thank you very much.  And it's set back far enough from the road that road salt should not have gotten to it.  As far as I can tell, we've taken good care of it through the winter.

Yet whenever I drive through the neighborhood I see everything else in full bloom.  Leaves are out on the oaks, the forsythia are done their blooming, and even some young trees are blossomed and leaves are coming out.  And still, our tree stands there just as bare as it was all winter.

There are signs for hope: the twigs do have buds on them, and the tips of the branches have a reddish bark that suggests, to me with my untrained eye at least, a healthy tree, ready to grow.  According to Cornell University, the leaves won't be out for about three weeks after the buds begin to swell in the spring.  I confess I can't say whether the buds have begun to swell, because I only just noticed them recently, yet it's not clear to me that they've swelled any.

It occurs to me this could be another teaching moment on Dad's part: patience, certainly.  ("Come ON, GROW already!")  And it also occurs to me that God could be using this first spring, and the anxiety of waiting for the tree to burst forth, to teach about waiting for the new life that comes in resurrection.  We may anxiously desire it, we may be looking for signs of its coming.  But just as with the blooming of a young sugar maple tree, it will happen on His own time, and we just need to put our concerns about it in His hands, waiting for the promise of new life that Easter represents.

The selfish part of me wants to see blooming: to see progress, new life, to know it's made it through the death of winter.  And maybe there's a lesson in there, too, about surrender, and trusting in the four hardest words in the English language: "Thy will be done."