One of my daughters rescued this mountain laurel plant from a dumpster at the garden center where she worked at the time. It had maybe two sticks and two leaves, but it was still alive. We picked a place to plant it, tucked it in with some fertilizer and figured it would either grow… or die.

In the beginning, it barely put out new leaves. Mountain laurels grow fairly slowly. It was in part shade, which it appeared to like. I shrugged, watered it, and ignored it.

A few years later, we had the Brood X cicada infestation and they decimated the poor plant. By mid-summer, I could see that the previous years’ growth was severely compromised. I pruned it, fertilized it, and waited…

It has grown back, slowly. It never bloomed until this year. Now the plant is covered in these lovely pink blossoms, the flower buds in tight star-shaped rosettes. Fiercely, proudly, it is making its presence known!

For a little plant that started as two sticks and two leaves, I was initially surprised at its comeback. Now I think it was just being wildly hopeful, obstinately growing, giving back beauty with every stubborn leaf and twig.

Hope is not this ephemeral, fingers-crossed, wishing-on-a-star emotion for people of faith. It is the willingness to dig deep when needed, and to believe that the Creator of the Universe is in the battle with you.

An internet writer named Matthew posted this:

Despite all wars, factions, genocide, character assassinations, snarky politics, attacks on civil rights, mass shootings, climate change, scarcity and fear, I continue to hope. To believe God is bigger than the pain. Bigger than the attacks. Bigger than the unknowns.

Stubborn Hope. That’s where I live. That’s where I’ll keep trying to bloom. Even if I’m starting with two sticks and two leaves.

Blessed be.