AMANDA'S BOUNTIFUL BOUQUETS

She emails beautiful virtual bouquets regularly to me so I call her my Flower Angel. She began that loving feat after the death of my husband a year and a half ago. That shows the generous state of her heart. My Flower Angel had lovingly and generously mailed comforting pictures to my husband, her Uncle Steve, while he was going through chemotherapy. He loved every picture she sent, knowing that they carried love in a pure form. I have them saved because they were so important to him. Her actual name is Amanda and she is my grand niece. I like calling her my great niece because she is such a great young lady, but she is grand, also, so both descriptions apply. At our last family gathering Amanda surprised me, not with a virtual bouquet, but with a bouquet of beautiful silk flowers. She had selected the flowers herself, knowing that I like bright colors, which she always puts in the virtual bouquets when she creates them. She graciously handed the silk flowers to me with a look of deep love in her eyes. I was thrilled beyond words. Amanda might not realize the significance of the specific flowers in the bouquet. It contained a bright red geranium, a lilac verbena, three bright pink hydrangea blossoms and a single white rose. The hydrangea blossoms and the white rose have deep, spiritual meaning to me, which I’m sure that Amanda does not even know. Two months after my husband died last year, I observed our 55th anniversary by buying myself a five feet tall hydrangea tree which I planted in a big outdoor pot. I placed the gorgeous, ever-blooming tree outside a large picture window where I can see it many times a day. It’s a constant reminder of the love we shared during our 55 years of marriage from which was produced the most loving family a woman could ever hope to have. The hydrangea blooms in Amanda’s bouquet signify to me the continuing love that I experience from 55 years of marriage. The other flower, the white rose, has even greater significance and importance. It was a surprise to me, but later I realized that God had guided Amanda in selecting the white rose. Years ago my husband had a yellow rose tattooed on his leg as an honor to me because he considered me his yellow rose of Texas. Since his death, yellow roses have showed up in my life in the most miraculous ways, all of them as a reminder of the love he had for me. One showed up in a large bouquet sent to me in which a single yellow rose graced a large bouquet. The florist told me that a yellow rose was not meant to be in that bouquet. I knew that my husband had been responsible for that yellow rose, from his vantage place in the heavens encouraging the florist to add the yellow rose. Other times a yellow rose has been handed to me by different people who had no knowledge of the significance to me of the yellow rose. As I was meditating with God about the white rose that Amanda placed in the middle of her loving gift to me, I asked Him why the white rose was sent rather than a yellow one. I was bowled over by what came to my mind, which surely was from God. He put in my mind the thought that the white rose was placed in the bouquet to remind me that my husband is now white as snow, completely pure, unencumbered by earthly shortcomings, because he is in the presence of God who is complete purity. The earlier yellow roses were previously significant of his flesh because he had put a single yellow rose on his leg in my honor; but the white rose is a visual representation of the sinless and pure state in which he exists now with God, white as snow, transformed by the nature of God. The amazing thing is that I have said many times that Steve is perfect now with the nature of God, whom he loves. Amanda gave me a white rose as a visual reminder of that truth, and she didn’t even know she was doing it. She just selected what she felt were the right flowers. That’s what makes it so much more heart warming, the fact that the idea originated from the Heart of God, sent to comfort and bring joy to me, and He sent it through my Flower Angel, Amanda. Amanda is certainly a wonderful blessing to me. God worked mightily through her when He impressed her to include the hydrangea blooms and the single white rose, both which carry great significance to me. It was another wonderful gift from God, sent to me directly through my Flower Angel, Amanda. Thank you, Amanda, for reminding Me that Steve is pure as the driven snow, joyful and rejoicing in heaven with God. Your bouquet brings me joy unspeakable.