I want to share a Gia’s victory garden “Summer update” on this page….because it is in full joyful bloom and I want to capture all the wonder and whimsy and wild!
I know she loves it! It has a different feel this year than it did last summer. Last year it was more organized and intentional and controlled ….but this year (after a very dark brown and crispy winter dormant), it feels more crazy, unexpected and explosive. I love how her garden reflects all of Gianna’s wild earthly and heavenly Joy right now.
This garden is truly holy ground.
It’s a visual of beauty from brokenness. It was born under a broken, dead mulberry tree that fell down just days before Gianna went into cardiac arrest in a freakish early spring ice storm (so symbolic 😢).
I remember feeling so sad because this ice storm totally unexpectedly assaulted our coming spring and killed our beloved tree that held many memories. Well, then life fell apart days later and death painfully assaulted us and our world went dark😭. we came home from the hospital after Gianna went to heaven and I remember falling to my knees on the ground where the tree had fallen and wept and punched the ground and screamed at heaven! I claimed that dark cold barren dead ground for miracles and beauty.
I had to claim truth when all I saw was death. I needed to see truth when I couldn’t believe it. I had to witness what beauty out of pain can look like. I had to stomp on death’s face and scream that eternal life wins!!! I had to see what I couldn’t feel! My baby was no longer in my arms and I felt so assaulted like a terrible storm had ravaged us😢.
How could There ever be beauty again?? Yet, the seeds planted in grief grew miracles of life. That painful dark first spring with Gianna in heaven, her garden grew around that broken stump and, though the new beauty didn’t replace the tree or ignore it, it bloomed in color and life Around the stump, around the deep loss and pain.
The labor of Sacred Pain was giving birth to new joy, new life and new hope… the Gia hole will always be there on earth… always recognized, always grieved, always deeply felt. But Her life blooms more life….and more color and we always want to be able to grow in her honor.
My Gianna is alive and because she LIVES and because we will see her again, we can rise up each day and face a new sunrise, a new message of Hope. This beautiful floral blooming paradise is a holy glimpse of the glorious explosion of eternity that is coming…glimpses of truth when we need to see TRUTH. A visual and symbol Of miracles that can be born from BROKENNESS.
Only a real living God can bring life from death. He brings victory where our eyes see defeat! Light where there seems to be a suffocation of darkness.
Like my garden, there are seasons in life (even days, months, hours and minutes) when the beauty and the joy are hard to see with earthly eyes, and all you can feel is the dark sting of death and the ache of separation…. But, Truth is light regardless if I can feel it or not and I need that anchor to always be singing back a louder song to my broken and grieving heart.
I tell my children to constantly be checking the garden every day because there are always new surprises springing up out of the dark cold ground and I do not want them to miss the beauty that is rising!
In our Sorrows, I want our eyes to always be open to Joy now and Joy coming, to Gianna’s Joy! Gianna’s garden honors both the joy and the sorrow …it does not ignore the pain or loss, or force one or the other. Joy and Sorrow, Pain and praise..they can all co-exist here together in a mess of beauty rising.
However this garden magnifies the light of HOPE above all else. The hope is holding on in each season. Hope is always sitting beside you in this space as you witness the new life.
Light is where I want to dwell as I grieve with HOPE. Truth is HOPE In despair🦋
May our lives forever grow in more joy and miracles because of a love and bravery that forever changes us and a God who defeats death.
One day ALL things New!
