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His
Mysterious Ways
By
Sandy Olmsted
Orland Park, Illinois
I stepped onto the patio.
It was early spring, only a few months after my 17-year-old daughter, Erin,
died, killed by a drunken driver. Erin loved sunning herself out here, curling
up in a deck chair with a book. Now the chair was empty. There was no book on
the end table. But I never wanted to forget what it was like to look out
and see her there. I turned to go back into the house and caught sight of a
splash of color. A single purple flower had pushed up among the rocks around the
patio, where nothing had ever grown before. Purple had always been Erin’s
favorite color.
That summer the flower grew tall and bloomed, and the next
summer a whole patch sprouted. I never did anything to care for those buds, but
somehow they still thrived. Every year I looked forward to sitting outside on
the patio with “Erin’s flowers,” as I decided to call them. It was my way of
feeling close to my daughter again.
The fifth summer, the flowers did not appear. I kept scanning
the rocks around the patio, and I looked all over the yard. I couldn’t see any
sign of them, not even a sprout.
November and the anniversary of Erin’s death came around.
One day I stood at the window, watching cold rain lash the
patio. God, I prayed, don’t let me forget what it feels like to be
close to my daughter.
Then a spot of purple caught my eye. I grabbed my raincoat
and rushed out on the patio. Erin’s flowers! How could they be growing
now, with winter on the way?
It snowed later that week, and four more times that winter,
yet the purple flowers survived, staying healthy and bright.
I don’t know much about flowers, but these intrigued me. I
took a picture and showed it to Erin’s grandmother. She’d know what they were.
“Do these look familiar?” I asked. She stared at the picture
for a minute, then looked up at me.
“Sandy,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “those are
forget-me-nots.”
I knew at once, a loving God would never let a mother forget.
The above article originally
appeared in the December 2003 issue of Guideposts.
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