I’ve been looking for dandelions ever since Anna’s mom told me the week before Anna died she called her sister a wishblower. Emily was out in the yard making wishes on dandelions. “Isn’t that just like her?” said Anna to her mom as they watched sixteen-year-old Emily, her long brown hair shining in the sun, make her wishes that waning afternoon.

Just days later, Emily walked away from that accident on a dark highway after a high school soccer game. Anna didn’t make it. Two sisters who did everything together now separated by heaven and earth.

I know. I’ve been writing about this all summer. Thank you for hanging in there with me on this one. Your love has been a lifeline through a coalmine of grief. Not the summer any of us expected to say the least.

This past weekend I stood in the meadow at our cabin and stared at a field of dandelions. I’ve never seen the mountains so dry. The dandelions so numerous. A drought so fierce in California.

And I didn’t make one wish. Not one. Never even thought about making a wish as I stood among the dandelions dying like soldiers on a battlefield.This drought is long, intense, and daunting. And grief can be this way, too.

I stood there after taking a few pictures with tears streaming down my face remembering Emily and Anna as little girls trudging through this meadow with their cousins when everything was green. When wildflowers bloomed. When laughter filled the mountain air. Emily the sweet one. And Anna Boo Boo: determination and sunshine were in that little girl.

I miss children laughing in the meadow.

And I don’t want to stand in a dandelion field for the rest of my life and weep.

I want to embrace wishblowing.

~ ~ ~ ~

Jesus said to the man by the pool, “Do you want to get well?”

I’ve been pondering this Bible story all week. I used to wonder why Jesus asked this man if he wanted to get well. Of course he wanted to get well! The man had been crippled for 38 years.

But Jesus saw something in this man’s heart. Something holding him back from truly wanting to get well.

The Healing at the Pool

Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. Here a great number of disabled people used to lie—the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, “Do you want to get well?”

“Sir,” the invalid replied, “I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me.”

Then Jesus said to him, “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk.” At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. John 5:1-15.

Sometimes I think we can grow comfortable in our brokenness. In our sickness. Our sadness. In living crippled for 38 years. We get stuck there and don’t want to walk away from it.

At the cabin, I slipped away by myself for awhile, and walking around, noticed this little pine pushing up through the wreckage of my grandparents’ old horse corral in the shadow of Anna’s family’s boarded up cabin. Pushing up through the dry ground. Pushing up through the four year drought. Fresh life. A new beginning.

Do you want to get well?

Do you want to see wishes instead of weeds?

Sometimes we need to ask ourselves what it is we really want out of life. “Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever,” says Hebrews 13:8. He’s still on the throne. He still heals.

A few days ago I prayed, “Lord, help me I’m weary of being weary.”

The following day in my morning devotions this promise jumped out at me. I didn’t plan this particular devotion. It was there. God was there. He’s always there.

I took this photo of our lake at the cabin. Jackson Meadows Reservoir. I’ve never seen it like this. Our whole cove is dry. We used to have a cabin on the lake. Now the lake is half a mile away. The water isn’t even close to our dock. I’m standing on our cabin porch as I snap this next picture. Below is our dock.

Yet, I am filled with hope.

God says He will refresh the weary. Me and the mountains He will refresh. And I believe Him.

p.s. check out Miss Kay’s Corner. She has a new spicy pumpkin cupcake recipe posted there.