A begonia, Ian & faith: an analogy

As you can guess,
it doesn't look like this anymore.

One of the flowers/plants we received for Ian's memorial service was a beautiful, blooming begonia from my Aunt Betty which immediately struck fear into my heart knowing my ability to kill plants at a glance.  So I babied it.  I moved it from place to place so it got enough sunlight.  I tried to made sure I didn't over or under water it.  I pruned all the deadheads weekly.  I spoke lovingly to it.  When it started looking especially sad, I immediately thought that transplanting it would do the trick - wrong.  It wasn't root-bound but rootless.  The roots were gone and all that was left was a ball at the base.  In my efforts to desperately try to save this plant, I'm Googling begonias, I'm reading everything I can to see how to care for this darn plant.  But alas, the day has come when this once beautiful plant is dying....there is a fungus among us.  I've pruned off some healthy stems hoping to root them in a fresh pot and I'm still hoping for the best but expecting it to die.

It's one more object connected to Ian that I have to say good-bye to, but at the same time I see a connection between this plant, Ian's death and my own faith journey.  As I'm watching this plant slowly die I can hear something reassuring me that it's okay for things to die.  All things die: relationships can die, loved ones (sometimes long before we're ready for them to), beloved pets, even this silly plant.  Even when what we love dies, sometimes, something else grows in it's place.  It may not be better but it could be and we won't know that for sure until we get to the end of our own life.  The only thing we do know for sure is it's changed us.  In taking small parts of this plant and replanting them I'm trying to retain some of it's original beauty and helping something, hopefully just as lovely, grow again.  We're doing the same thing with Ian's legacy - his passion for art and music.  We're combining the artwork he left behind, along with the money raised by the people who loved or admired him and are growing that into a Foundation that can share his passion for art.  Both are taking a different form but the essence of those things we loved, live on.

My faith, in some ways, is taking a similar path.   It's doesn't look the way it used to, it's morphing into something else and that's not necessarily a bad thing.  If I can take the healthy parts of that faith and re-pot it into something new there's hope that I can come out of this tunnel better than when I walked into it.  To do that, I need to invest the same energy I've expended into googling ways to care for a begonia into deciphering what I believe.  Not necessarily what people tell me I should believe but what my soul tells me, what I believe God is telling me.   I believe God will lead me through that process.  My belief IN God hasn't wavered, my belief in exactly WHO He is, is what's being transformed.

Sometimes I have conversations with Ian inside my head, like tonight.  I'm watching The Good Wife on TV and this season is really good, maybe the best season yet.  I think, "Ian would love this."  Then I hear, "I would mom, but it's so much better here."