ROSE, APHID OR LADYBUG?

Please don't eat me dear Ladybug
Originally uploaded by Anderson Mancini

Has God ever planted you where you have found it nearly impossible to bloom? Have you been a willing bud, using the Lord's water and sunshine to grow taller and eventually open......only to have a bunch of aphids eat you up?

I was thinking about this with a friend of mine who is one of the most beautiful flowers in my bouquet of friends. She has been planted. She started to bloom....and then the aphids set in.

Funny little guys, those aphids. For the most part, anyone who owns roses has a very low opinion of these bugs. As a matter of fact, there seems to only be one group of folks that appreciate them. Ants. Ants like them because they round them up and keep them. Turns out if you stroke those ugly green aphids, they actually give milk that gives life to whole colonies of ants. So....if you are an ant, you learn to manipulate the aphids and get what you want.

The beautiful thing about busy ants is, they actually provide food for the aphids. In this way, the aphids stop eating the roses. They are happy, little insects because they are being fed and stroked and cared for. But an ant can only do so much. Ants can't capture ALL of the aphid eggs and take them to their nest. While an ant can round up a lot of aphids, they don't get them all, and the ones that stay outside the ant nest continue to eat the rose. Inside the nest or out, aphids are pretty self-centered little boogers.

And so we are with friendships sometimes. We know people who are hard to reach. They are interested in what works for them. They have their own agenda and we only fit in if we stroke and feed them. And so we try. We reach out. We try everything that has worked making connections in the past. But, sometimes those aphid acquaintances won't be corralled. They keep munching on your bloom until you are ragged and withered.

But what I have found is....sometimes God wants us to be the ants. Reaching out, helping, caring, TRYING.

And sometimes, He wants to remind us that we are the rose. The bloom He has planted for His good purposes. Sometimes, He wants us to just be rooted in Him....even during long winter, dormant months. Months that seem to last years. I think He does it so that others can look at the rose and say, "Wow! She never failed! Not even once! She had faith and moxy. There is NO way she could have done that without God."

And I believe that God also helps the bloom stay on the rose. He does it by sending the anti-aphid. The ladybug. Beautiful, red, buzzing around, looking for something to eat. And aphids are hard to see. Until there are a BUNCH of them nibbling away. That is when God sends the ladybug(s) to swoop in and make a meal of them!

I think the hardest thing is to see that you are the rose. And to wait for the ladybugs. To understand that the dormant season is actually a blessing of relief somehow. And that spring will come....and that it will likely bring aphids. But....hear that buzzing?

Here come the ladybugs!