The Way Back to Life

By Kimberly Phinney

In 2020, when the world was shutting down from COVID, I was shutting down too, as I battled an insidious autoimmune disease, multiple surgeries, and sepsis. So, it feels rather silly to state the obvious: the past two years have been the most difficult years of our lives. Overnight, everything we thought we knew was flipped upside down. And to be honest, that kind of life-shattering change brings even the strongest of faith to their knees. I know this because it happened to me. (And if you’re new here, I warmly invite you to read my “Beauty from Ashes Story”—just so you can get up to speed on my health journey.)

So, to cope in this present aftermath, I find peace in my garden’s classroom. And on these most recent quiet days, I find myself thinking about the buds on my orchid that are about to bloom again—after many months of dormancy. I study them like a good book, as they silently reach for Heaven’s light. And as they revive themselves at a pace slower than the hour hand on my wall clock, I ask them, what are you trying to tell me, sweet ones?

And then I listen…

And as I listen, I am reminded of a story I told several years back during a dark time in my life that I’d like to reframe with the new lessons critical illness has taught me:

It was just last June when the blooms fell off my orchid—I thought for good. And what was left was a lifeless brown-green stick with shriveled leaves that beckoned death. To me, it had to be pitched in the garbage. What was its purpose now?

At this time, my mother, a consummate gardener, was living with us, and she scolded me good for thinking such a thing.

“What are you doing?” she asked, as my arm extended the sad looking plant into the garbage. Disapproval tinted her kind face. I had crossed the line.

“Orchids are perennials. They bloom every year… You can’t throw that away!” she ordered.

“But it looks dead, Mom—”

“So!” she countered.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “So, what am I supposed to do with it until then?”

“You water it! You nurture it! And I promise you it will bloom again.”

I was doubtful as I surveyed the sad, dried-up leaves and its bloomless stem. I hadn’t been very good to that little plant, but I knew I better listen to my mother and shape up.

Mothers are always right about these things.

The orchid plant was nothing to look at, but like my mother instructed, I dutifully nurtured it for many, many months. I watered it. I rotated it. I trimmed away the shriveled parts. I looked at it. I read by it (because that’s what introverted English majors do). I was kinder to my orchid than when it was blooming and beautiful.

The time went by: July, August, September… No blooms… then October, November, December, and January… Even still—there were no blooms.

I was losing faith. It had been so long that I forgot what the blooms even looked like.

I complained to my mom. She said, “Just wait.”

Then, the early Florida spring came: February… and March...

And then… finally… those much-nurtured, much-anticipated orchid blooms came in—at least a half-dozen of them when the blooming ceased, and they were so much more beautiful than I ever remembered—pure white with speckled magenta, as if Jackson Pollack adorned them himself.

I was elated. I called my mom.

“I can’t believe it,” I announced, “They finally bloomed!”

And she said, “See? I told you. You should have just believed.”

- - -

Had I not heeded my mother’s advice, I would have missed a second bloom. And had I not witnessed the orchid’s miraculous rebirth, I would have lost this sacred gift nature wanted to bestow. I said, “Now.” And the orchids said, “Wait.” I pleaded, “But when?” And the orchids said, “Believe.”

Wait. Nurture. Believe.

I think there is a lesson here for me—for us all: The pattern of nature is our pattern of praise. I’ll say it again and one more time for myself: The pattern of nature is our pattern of praise.

Wait. Nurture. Believe.

For everything, there is a season (Eccles 3:1). In the bleakness of winter, there is promised life beneath the powdered snow where growth cannot be seen. What looks dead can be revived. What is lost can be found. It’s a tragic thing that desolate times are promised to come, but so are the blessings if only we persevere. Nature shows us what survival looks like, what life looks like in cycles, and how we ought to find praise in it all.

I will be honest with you—these words are jagged and hard for me to swallow sometimes. After all of my suffering, it’s hard to take the lessons from my 29-year-old self or grip onto the yellow-tinged memories of Sunday school. Chronic pain and limitation can drive you so very low. We are of wings and dirt—spirit and flesh. And the Dark Night of the Soul waits on a pin’s head for the faithful to wane. And I have felt her breath on my neck one too many times.

So, I am not entirely sure there is a reason for everything. But I do believe in every thing, we must find our own reasons. For me, that is a faith I must cling to, no matter what my feelings say. For me, it’s choosing love, no matter how Fear may try to beat my body and mind with his twisted hands.

I should have died. I didn’t.

So, maybe this second chance at life is my next orchid bloom—and I’d like to believe it is. With my illness, we officially left spring and entered the dormant cold of December. The bloom of innocence and future biological children are officially gone. We didn’t know when or if our lives would ever come back to life as we knew it before. And we still don’t know. But we will “wait, nurture, and believe.” We will commit to God’s promises, and we will do the good work—even when it hurts.

There is no doubt that it’s a tragedy when the bloom falls off of anything in life—job loss, a lost friendship, miscarriage, a broken marriage. You, dear reader, know this pain all too well. But I’m choosing to look at suffering in a new way because I have no other choice: not as an interminable circumstance that must be avoided at best and endured at worst, but rather as a wintry season that will positively yield a spring despite it.

The poignancy of this moment reminds me of a favorite quote in Hemingway’s memoir, A Moveable Feast:

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen…”

So, will you wait and believe, my friend, with a child’s faith (or a bloodied saint’s faith) in your winter? Be it loss, illness, disability, or loneliness? Will you do battle with the pain, fear, and doubt? Because, if we are willing to persevere, the Good Father will take our broken things—our dead things—and make them bloom again (Rom 8:28).

It won’t be easy.

But the orchids will come.

And spring will finally sing over us all.

There is a way back to life.

And as for me? I’m going to keep believing that I will fly again one day—far away from here. And not because I have wings—but because hearts do.

You belong here,