You will seek Me and find Me when you search for me with all your heart.

Jeremiah 29:13

I've been trying to grow morning glories on my back porch trellis for three years.  Squirrels got them one year, to the delight of the falsely accused cat.  Another was just too late and too hot and they never went anywhere.  This year I was determined.  I started visiting nurseries on the first warm weekend in spring and was told to come back in May.  Two more visits and tantalizing rows of endless varieties of 

spring blooms at last netted me three sturdy plants I was assured would quickly consume my trellis.

I forgot to ask the definition of quickly.  

It was a rather discouraging prospect.  There were no blooms on these plants like the rows of offerings I had wandered blissfully through before finally asking for help.  They looked quite spindly next to the trellis when I planted them.  The previous year, when I had tried to start them from seeds, I had plant boxes stuffed with tender shoots.  Of course they had all died before reaching the bottom of the trellis, so it seemed best to follow directions anyway.

For weeks, there seemed to be little progress.  The three plants shot straight up.  I wound them diligently along the trellis as they grew.  Somedays, they even seemed to wind themselves.  

But they didn't branch out to cover the trellis, and they didn't show the least sign of blooming.  

A week and a half of summer travel, a week and a half of leaving them to the tender mercies of my twenty-six year old son, I returned to find they'd finally reached the top.  With no where else to go, they  started winding their way back down again, finally beginning to cover more area.  Even better, tiny buds were now visible, a promise of beautiful flowers to come.  

One perfect blossom appeared at the top of the trellis one morning, a joy through the day before it withered in the heat by late afternoon.  I eagerly watched the same spot for more, checking the blooms, fretting over watering, willing an explosion of color to form across within the leaves.  Nothing happened.  

I sat on my swing one morning, poking at the dirt and wondering if they needed more water or less, when I finally saw it.  Low on the vine, almost hidden by the leaves and the trellis, another beautiful nearly formed blossom.  I teased it gently out into the open and found more just behind it.  Tiny buds, hiding shyly, trailing up and across the vine, waiting their moment to burst into color.  

Blessing of God, growing just out of view, hidden until I take the time to look.