Roses from Heaven

As some of my friends know, I have a small rosebush in my front yard that I call my “miracle bush” from God. I have never worked on grooming or pruning this bush (I don’t do yard work at all), but every so often it blooms beautiful dark-pink roses.
Roses are very special to me – I’ve loved them since I was a child and used to get bunches of them from my Great Uncle Benny’s rosebushes (he loved yard work!). My husband Vince had always given me roses on birthdays and other special occasions, as well as sometimes for no reason at all – “just for being me”, he would say.
Since his awful illness struck several years ago, leaving him physically and mentally disabled, there have of course been no more roses from him. But it seems that God in His great love has sent me roses on my little bush. For the past few years, since I started noticing it, roses have bloomed on my birthday, which is in October – not exactly rose-blooming season. On my past two birthdays, the day before there were slightly burgeoning blooms, but there would be rain storms which you might think would have destroyed them. Then on my birthday, there was at least one perfect rose – perfect! At least one rose has also bloomed on Mother’s Days. (And we have a large tree that blooms pink blossoms every year on our Anniversary in April – okay, spring is blossom time, but the tree waits till our anniversary to open!).
Once in the past year, we had a terrible storm, and the next day my rosebush was all bent over on the ground – as it is, half of the bush is buried under a large azalea bush. I believed that God would raise up the bush again – and He did – and roses even bloomed in the darkness under the azalea bush – God shines His light in all the dark places!

Today, Sept. 8, the Catholic Church celebrates the birth of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This morning I read in Presentation Ministries’ “One Bread One Body” that Mary loves to give us gifts on her birthday. Of course, she has given us the greatest gift of all, her son Jesus. In addition, she is the perfect role model of a mother, bearing the grace of perfect love, perfect patience, and perfect goodness.
Yesterday I noticed that there was kind of a rose trying to open at the top of my rosebush, but it was pretty scrawny-looking. I was thinking that maybe somehow it would become a perfect rose for Mother Mary’s birthday today. That is exactly what happened – this morning there was a fully-opened dark pink rose, open to the heavens.