Several years ago, my daughter Emma and I went to Romania. It was early summer when we left, and the landscape here in Maine was beginning to wake up. Our yard has many old garden beds that needed to be cleaned out before I went away. My favorite bush in our yard is our Rose of Sharon, and I knew the large pink and white blooms were going to appear after our departure date. When we arrived in Romania that summer, we were initially in the city, but soon we headed out to the more rural parts of the country. As we drove through the countryside, I began to notice several patches of white and pink that looked familiar. To my surprise, many of the houses had Rose of Sharon shrubs that were in full bloom. I became very emotional knowing that back home my plants were also in bloom. It was God’s reminder to me that despite obvious differences between us, we are in many ways the same. They had families to care for, jobs to work at, and gardens to tend just as I did. The language may have been different, but their rhythms were not. In a time when our differences from each other are too often the focus, the rose of Sharon reminds me how alike we are.
Megan Talbot lives in North Berwick with her three kiddos and husband, Dave. She works at North Berwick Elementary School and still needs to finish her spring yard work…