Through My Window

Well, today is birthday number forty one and I've been thinking all morning about something profound to write.
It is overcast today but promising to warm up into the seventies which, for my birthday, is pretty warm. We need the rain so I say bring it on. After three weeks and many hours of raking this old new yard, the lawn is greening up and looking pretty and just two days ago the leaves on the trees appeared. I never used to be so aware of the day the leaves appeared or the growth of perennials a day at a time but I am more attuned now and I find it fills me with a sense of blessing and joy to know how to find the fingerprints of God on average days.
I am sitting in my future office, my computer facing the window which looks out over the back yard. There's Donny sniffing around for something that seems very important. He sneaked his bunny into the yard last night so this morning he dragged it inside wet and smelly from the overnight sprinkles. Into the washer it went to his dismay. I think he preferred the stinky bunny.
From here I can also see my grampa's grape vines. As a kid I'd eat the green sour grapes unwashed as I walked under the canopy of leaves. In the last several years it has ceased to produce grapes, obviously my grampa pruned it in his daily care of the yard although I don't recall ever seeing him do so. That brings me to another point of happiness, my cousin Tom. Tom is Trish's husband, you'll see her blog to your right. Tom is the son of my gramma's sister. Got that? We have always been close to these cousins on the Hungarian side of the family. I have always felt deeply loved by Tom and Trish and their daughters were in my wedding twenty two years ago and would be again today. Tom painted this house after my gramma's death and the very paint on the walls feels like a gift from him when I walk through these rooms. When I came over to see the progress, he seemed to feel honored to work in my grandparent's house. He understands this house too.
So back to the grapevines outside my window this morning. I mentioned that I'd like to bring them back to life but I was afraid to work on them not knowing what I'm doing. To no one's surprise, Trish said Tom could prune them. And so I came home from work to find the brown vines trimmed and pruned and a pile of dead vines that had been choking back the fruit. And once again, Tom has convinced me that he did not come here to work but to love and minister to us. Us being my grandparents, my parents, all of us.
We are the grapevine outside my window. Intertwined and flourishing in our day. Thickened and unproductive in quieter years. God has pruned away the vines that have served their purpose and left what seems like just a few to grow deeper roots and bring forth the next harvest. The grape arbor seems stark outside of my window with so many vines now missing. But it does not make me sad to see it. I know from seasons past that it will fill in with healthy new growth and it will flourish again. Some vines are many years old and once touched by my grampa. Some vines have come to be since his death that he has never seen. And someday vines will curl up the wires of the arbor that I will never see. All bearing the handiwork of loving hands and God's purpose.
So this is my birthday. Very likely the half-way mark of my mortality. I too have been pruned to reveal what more I can be by loving hands.
I too am intertwined, my branches among so many others and inseparable at the root.

John 15:1-3 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.