The moon has always been a comfort to me. As a girl, I used to sit out in my yard and talk to it—my way of talking to God. When I had a child of my own, I taught him about the moon. “It disappears from our sight every month,” I said, “but it never really leaves us.”
“Even when we can’t see it?” Jeffrey asked.
“Even when we can’t see it. God’s that way too.”
Jeffrey was killed by a drunk driver when he was 18. There was a full moon that night. I went into the yard and looked into the sky, but the moon brought me no comfort now. God, have you left me?
Time passed in a fog, and one day I noticed leaves growing on a vine by Jeffrey’s bedroom window. He and his friends used to climb in and out of that window all the time. They trampled that ground so much, nothing had a chance of growing there.
Nevertheless buds appeared on the vine. But it wasn’t until after sundown that the buds opened into beautiful white flowers. A sweet fragrance drifted in through Jeffrey’s window. Next morning I went outside. The buds had closed. Like the moon, I thought, they come out at night. I remembered how the moon used to soothe my heart.
God, I think this is your way of soothing me. That night, the moon was as pretty as I’d ever seen it. And I knew God was near night after night, when I smelled the blossoms’ sweet aroma.
One afternoon I was flipping through a magazine and came upon a picture of these mysterious blossoms I’d come to love. They were a tropical American morning glory. Their name?
Moonflowers.
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