Just like the Hydrangeas

Hello friends,
Again, it's been a while. You will have to excuse my tardiness of my updates. As I'm sure you all can guess, life has been insane. Michael and I are officially down to 18 days until we will be Mr. and Mrs. Wong. Go ahead. Laugh. My name will be Rae Wong. Say it 4 times fast...bet you can't do it! We've gotten a good number of laughs out of that new name, but I am very excited to obtain it.

In the midst of wedding-madness, I got into a teaching certification program, so that's made life extra interesting. Life in the church plant business is picking up, as we prepare to do our hard launch as Harbor Community Church. Systems are taking form and teams are being built. It's a good thing and exhausting to know what work goes into building a healthy church. All of you who are in an established church, BE THANKFUL. You will never know how it happens until you see it happens. You can hear the stories and see the ramifications of early decisions, but you will never know the toil and work that goes into building it until you do it.

As for me personally, I am overwhelmed with transition. Seems to be the story of my life lately. While it's a good thing, I find that I lose hope easily, which is hard for me to admit. Tonight, I am discouraged (though somewhere deep in me knows that joy will come in the morning.)
Let me try to relate this...


A previous roommate and friend of Michael had a dog named Abita. This past Fall, excited for the ability to grow flowers in November and December, I purchased a bunch of pre-established flowers from a gardening organization in the city that was practically giving them away. I purchased 4 hydrangea plants, beautiful in color, and hurried home to plant them in bigger pots to get them started. Abita, though a wonderfully dog, did not know that she should not eat my lovely new hydrangeas. And ate she did. The barely formed new plants were snapped off here and there, gnarled from her teeth. I thought that they were done for, but Michael convinced me to hold onto them, as he thought they would bloom again.

So I waited for their inevitable death.

A few weeks later, I noticed buds starting to come off of their still mangled branches.

The next night, we had a hard freeze, which is pretty rare for the tropical climate of New Orleans.
Surely the brown, withered leaves were tell-tale signs that these plants were done for.

Again, Michael convinced me to hold on a bit longer.

And then, this past weekend, I walked past my hydrangeas... And they were full of new buds and leaves. Sprouts of color were popping out on even the mangled branches. A new hope filled me. Those branches would see beautiful blooms yet!

It wasn't until tonight that I realized the likeness between the hydrangeas and myself.
Since I have arrived in New Orleans, I have felt like it has been one thing after the next, making me give a bit of myself up. A snapping of a twig here, a bite off a leaf there. Little by little, I have given up my creativity. I have given up my time. I have given up the things that allowed me to worship fully.

The eaten hydrangea. The frozen hydrangea.

And then tonight, whilst in the middle of a breakdown that resulted in a discussion with Michael about the possibility of having to give up the one last thing that connects me to my old self, playing music, I realized how wrong I have been all along and the perspective that I have viewed the hydrangea from.

Since I have arrived in New Orleans, it has felt like a constant battle to not give up who I am. The transition to a full time job. The transition to a boyfriend to a fiance to a husband. The transition to a church plant. It has all left me with the remnants of what was once, sure, a lovely little flower. But through the work of the Gospel and the promise that He works for the good of those who love Him, we are assured that the eaten and frozen hydrangea will once again grow. But not only will it grow. It will flourish. Through the mystery of the resurrection and the promise that those who lose their life will gain it, I will live life more abundantly than anything I could have imagined.

Though I do not feel like myself right now, what good was myself? What good was what I knew of myself? What does it matter...when the life I lead is not my own, but the taking up of a cross.

Through the brokenness comes restoration and through that restoration comes the hope of a good and fruitful life that will be more than my creativity or ingenuity or time could have ever produced.

But that doesn't mean I won't suffer growing pains to get there. It just means that I will need to learn to be joyful in the affliction of the freeze and the pruning by the dog.