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“We used to do that with cattle. Dad would pick the best heifers and keep those, sell the rest.”
“Your dad was a cattleman?”
“He ran my grandfather’s station for a while. He lost it when my mom got sick. Cancer.”
Garrett raised an eyebrow, then sighed. “Yes. We had a scare too.”
“Jenny?”
“Breast cancer. Rough fight, but she won.”
“You said something—”
“About God’s presence in your life.”
Hud stuck his hand in his pockets as Garrett went back to pruning. “Actually, I was thinking about your daughter, and, yeah, I think I’m in love with her.”
“Well, when you get pastin loveand are settled on justlove, let me know.”
Hudson frowned. “Yeah, okay.”
Garrett nodded but kept pruning.
“What you said about God putting me in the right place at the right time—you really believe that?”
“That God has us all in his hand, yep.”
“Even though your wife had cancer?” He hadn’t expected to say that, but maybe Garrett could help him untangle the knot inside him.
The one that didn’t understand why God had let them lose everything, let his mom suffer.
“Yes, Hudson.” He dropped a spur to the ground. “I know without a doubt that we are rooted in his love for us.”
“Cancer doesn’t feel like love.”
“No, it doesn’t, because cancer is a product of sin. It’s evil and part of the fallen bodies we live in. It’s the destruction of the cells of our bodies. Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy, but Jesus says He has come so that we might have life, and have it to the full.”
“How do you do that when…life feels so fragile?”
Garrett dropped another dead spur to the ground. “You root deep in God’s love. You know, without a doubt, that you are His, and no one can take you from Him.”
“I don’t even know what that looks like.”
Another spur fell. “Did you know, Hudson, that the wordYahwehis the Jewish name for God? When Moses asked God what his name was, he said, what translates to Yh Wh. The Hebrew alphabet added the rest to give it intonation. But if you stop and say that, it sounds exactly like breathing. Yh. Wh. Out. In. The scriptures say that in Him we live and move and have our being. He is the very air in our lungs. You literally cannot breathe without saying His name. God is life. God loves you, He made you, and He keeps you breathing, even when people we love have cancer. And it’s on this truth that you root your life.”
He swallowed and looked at the house, and it seemed for a moment that his hand shook.
Then he sighed and turned back to the vine. “Without our rootstock, the vine dies. We die. Because life is fragile. But the rootstock of this vine”—he leaned down and put his hand around it, shook it a little—“is hearty and strong.”
He handed Hud the clippers. Hud stared at them. “What are you doing?”
“Teaching you how to grow a strong vine.”
Hudson stepped up to the vine, and Garrett leaned near him. “This main extension from the rootstock is called a cordon, and from the cordon, there are tiny growths, called spurs. From that grow our one-year-old canes. We’re going to cut off most of the buds from this growth and leave only a couple. We don’t count this little bud at the apex of the one-year-old growth, but count up a couple buds and cut there.” He counted the buds that grew from the apex and then pointed to a space above it. “Cut it here.”
“Just cut it?” Hud put the clippers around the branch.
“Go ahead.”
