Tending Roses (Tending Roses #1)

by Lisa Wingate

Bread, like a good life, can only be created by honest measure.

It’s gift enough that everyone will be together for Christmas.”

her eyes moistening. “And it’s wonderful to have family in the house again.”

“That’s the problem with people. We’ll starve to death looking over the fence when we’re knee-deep in grass where we are.”

Sometimes it’s easier to have sympathy for strangers than it is to have sympathy for your own family. Which isn’t right. But that’s the damage a long trail of bitterness can do. It dulls the way you look at people—like a wash of watercolor black that makes everything look darker than it is.

We must realize that they are going on the only road they can see.

Get on a different road, end up in a different place

“We can’t change the past.” I looked at Karen and hoped the ice inside her was softening. “We probably can’t even change the way we feel, but it would be better for Grandma if we could at least try to act like a family. She is really counting on this Christmas being a family time.”

The three of us looked at one another as we filed out Joshua’s door, and in spite of everything, we smiled at each other. Grandma Rose had managed to bring us to a point of common understanding after all.

Yet she was strong in her determination to make us a family again. Perhaps determination was one thing age could not take away.

All I could do was try to do the same and stop letting my little-girl self do my thinking.

Funny how you never quite outgrow sibling rivalry.

A tear slipped from her eye and traced the lines of her cheek, and I knew she was talking about herself. “Christmas is the hardest day of the year when you have nothing.”

When I finally grew up, I hoped I would be just like her.

I understood now that all of us have that place inside that wants to be part of something, that needs the comfort and companionship of loved ones.

Within each of us, there is an empty room, and when we open the door, light flows in. The wider we open it, and the longer we leave it open, the brighter our souls become.

Whatever else we felt, however we had failed each other in the past, or would in the future, we were still sisters.

“If Grandma Vongortler were here, she’d say, ‘The Lord doesn’t give us more than we can bear,’ or the ever popular, ‘Be patient. Everything doesn’t have to work itself out today.’”

“Everything will be all right now that my Katie is here.”

glad to be young, surrounded by activity and noise, not caged in the silent solitude of old age.

Your children are not your accomplishment to hold up to her, nor is her work and her money hers to lord over you. Both are gifts God has given, by His grace, not by your works. God has put you where you are, and He will show you where you should go from here. Be humble. Be gracious and grateful. Bring the family closer together. I wish I had not waited until the end of my life to begin this task. Now I have no choice but to leave it for you to finish.” She smiled, giving my fingers a squeeze. “When you feel burdened, listen to the laughter of your children. Take delight in them. They will make your load seem light.”

This had been the hardest year of my life, when all the colors ran outside the lines I had drawn, but also the year when I finally discovered myself.

Please, God, let her live long enough to see her roses bloom once more.

I knew she was waiting for the roses.

“The secret to a happy life is not in getting what you want. It is in learning to want what you get. Don’t waste your time crying over what you’re not given.

When you have tears in your eyes, you can’t see all the beautiful things around you.”

Each of us talked to her in private moments, telling her what she meant to us and how much we loved her. We told her that Grandpa was waiting for her in heaven and that we would be all right after she was gone. We told her that she need not hold on for us any longer.

As I sat at her deathbed, she laid her hand on my stomach, round with life soon to be born. This babe, she told me, was the end sum of her existence, the part of her that would go on. The reason she had existed at all.

I cannot put words to the feelings within me on the day we brought her out for burial. It is an odd thing to stand so close to life’s beginning and life’s end. Birth and death are such strange cousins.

Katie, do not be sad. You must smile at my babies for me. I love all of you, Grandma

Human beings are basically tribal animals, and I think that these days a lot of us are missing a tribe.

I like to write about people forgetting the destination and enjoying the journey.