Hello, my name is Lacey, and I am addicted to roses. I know this, and I do not actually want help. I just want all the roses.
Seriously though, a few years ago I discovered that I am obsessed with growing roses. I’ve always liked them, but this preoccupation turned a corner when I discovered English roses and Antique roses. A whole new level of beauty, and also pain, gripped me.
Roses will thrill you and break your heart.
Considered by many to be the queen of the garden, they certainly act like it.
Beautiful and entitled, they demand your attention and undivided loyalty. In return, they reward you with colorful flower magic. Gorgeous blooms that bring the admiration of friends and neighbors.
Now, of course, my snobbery reveals itself in my opinion that there are peasant roses.
These roses require very little effort and produce lots of subpar, in my opinion, blooms. They’re the rose bushes you see outside the grocery store or planted around the driveway of an upscale 7-Eleven.
I unashamedly look down on those roses because every space one of them occupies creates a transfer station for my number one fear as a rose gardener: Rose rosette disease (RRD).
RRD is the absolute terror of the rose world.
There is no cure for this disease, and it is spread by nearly invisible mites that, I kid you not, travel on the wind with Mary Poppins-like freedom.
Once they infect a rose, it slowly begins to twist and become disfigured with ugly red growth. It takes its time, but one hundred percent of the time it will kill the bush. And if you don’t remove the infected plant quickly enough, it can spread through your entire garden.
It takes a while for the disease to kill a bush, which means neglected roses often become the source of infection for every rose nearby. Peasant and queen alike.
Nothing is safe.
When I first learned about RRD, I almost stopped collecting roses altogether.
I was filled with fear that these plants I had tenderly cared for and waited years to see mature could be taken away by some random mite from an untended bush outside Taco Bell.
I’m not kidding when I tell you this really freaked me out.
Why spend years dreaming about and caring for something if there is so much risk involved? Why even try?
Fear has that ability.
It steals hope.
It steals creativity.
It steals dreams.
And it paralyzes us with the question, “Why am I even attempting this?”
In the end, I decided that if I wanted roses, I would have to make peace with the risk.
And if the worst happened…
I could always plant another rose.
I couldn’t let fear become the driver of my dreams.
Fear assumes a non-redemptive future.
To put it simply, everything we fear is a projection of the future that leaves Christ out of the story.
But He is the wild card. The unexpected. The Redeemer. The One who always gets the final word.
So plant the garden.
Dream the dream.
Love the people.
Start the business.
Write the book.
Whatever He has placed before you, pursue it knowing that He holds the future.
And even if your worst fears become reality, they will never have the last word.
Jesus will.
“Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. I am the living one. I died, but look—I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and the grave.” Jesus in Revelation 1:17-18 (New Living Translation)
With love and hope,
Lacey Steel
