Sierra V. Fedorko

In 2018 when we officially began our little porch garden I never dreamed I would have this many flowers to cut and make into bouquets for neighbors and friends.

But that’s the thing—

God does life. He multiplies it. He spills it over and over and over.

Flowers die and in their deaths, abundant seeds can be poured out into more flower blooms. And on and on this goes!

Death never has the final say, even when it does say a lot.

Words are often brutal in times of grief, but flowers say what I can’t always bear to hear and that would be…God is good. Always.

Most especially in my season of infertility when my idea of God was obliterated and I could not handle Christian cliches and platitudes, the Lord showed me His kindness and His love for me in the flowers that would bloom in such beauty and without reserve, how they kept multiplying in those flower pots and how the garden couldn’t help but spill out until it was no longer just on the porch.

God wanted life for me.

And I believed Him.

Now eight years in and I get overwhelmed by flower blooms and find myself making bouquets to leave on porches or pass along to dear friends at church.

So, I am learning something entirely different in this season of gardening.

These days flowers repeatedly remind me that I must tend to tend the beautiful things in my life. If I don’t the flowers will waste away, the blooms won’t be as many, and the opportunities to savor it and share it with others will eventually fade out.

In the same way we can’t ignore the grief or pain present in our days, we are also required to tend to the joy and beauty in our life. Flowers have spoken about joy and into grief so profoundly. They have shown me both sides to life.

God gives us such personal gifts according His wisdom and I truly believe He gave me the gift of the garden—most especially before the gift of children—to show me His heart of life for me, in every season…no matter what.

The flowers pictured are from my own little California garden and are as follows: shasta daisies (white), black-eyed susans (yellow + sunflower-esque), cornflowers, (aka bachelor buttons, pink + purple), and a very light sprinkling of cosmos (light pink), calendula (bright orange & yellow), cut roses (the most voluminous of the flowers), zinnias and strawflowers which you can barely see.

(Fun fact about strawflowers: They feel like paper!)

I wanted 2026 to be a flower year but then I found myself pregnant(!!) at the same time our youngest daughter became inexplicably sick earlier this year. My more meticulous garden plans had to wait, but throwing wildflower packets into two flowerbeds was exactly the low maintenance gardening I could handle in that season. And it happened to be the best thing I could possibly do.

It’s like God knows or something?! 🙂 He is always using the flower to show me His love!

Now, on the other side of my daughter’s illness and the worst of my pregnancy nausea, the once effortless wildflowers have burst to the scene in great numbers and with great demand, and I am in a place where I can (and I must!) tend to them.

May you be encouraged in the Lord’s very personal + wise gifts to you today.

Have you read Green Fables–the series yet? We are on our second novelette, Under the Wilderness Moon.