Love Lesson from The Beautiful Ocotillo
Posted by Phil Waring at 2/22/2008 6:23 AM and is filed under uncategorized 
When couples purchase new homes in Arizona, they soon discover that the back yard landscape project is left to them. Most builders leave the back yard completely barren for the couple to create their own special destination. It can be a challenge!
New home or old, many Arizona couples find themselves in a desert nursery, looking for the right plants for their new paradise. The possibilities are endless.
Desert plant nurseries are very different than those in other parts of the country. The flowering cacti, the majestic trees and the tender succulents make visioning a desert garden so easy.
Some people are actually like Tim Allen from The Home Improvement Show, and have their own brand of “ooh, ooh, ooh,” expressing emotional pleasure as they walk through the nursery. It can be so much fun with your partner!
A walk through the desert plant nursery will showcase a highly unusual plant, the ocotillo; the fonquieria splendens. The ocotillo is sold as a bare-root skeleton of a plant. In fact, at first-glance, it looks completely dead with no hope of life.
Other names for the Ocotillo include, Candlewood, Flamingsword, and Jacob's Staff. Looking at a bare-root specimen, it’s hard to believe that it can blossom into a beautiful, leafy and radiant object in the desert.
What makes an apparently dead-looking clump of sticks come to life? Rain! When it rains, the ocotillo explodes with deep green leaves from top to bottom within hours. After another day or two, the ocotillo grows beautiful red blossoms that cover the top twelve or more inches of each cane. In the desert heat, the ocotillo soon dries out and slowly drops those beautiful green leaves and then finally, the red blossoms full of seeds fall to the dry ground.
Relationships are like plants in some ways. They grow. They have seasons. Relationships have real needs in order to survive the seasons and to grow. They can have lean and tough times, but they don’t have to die.
Deprive a relationship from what it needs and it can leave both parties parched and lifeless. Supply what a relationship needs and it can blossom into something beautiful.
An ocotillo’s needs are simple. Even a misting of rain can give the plant new color. It has no brain so it has no other needs.
A marriage relationship, however, is complex and has many needs. There are physical, emotional, spiritual and mental needs in whole relationships. Those needs are met by time and attention... loving rain that is showered on a partner as growth is encouraged, season by season.
A marriage is like that new back yard. It can be a palette for creativity. In order to grow and survive the many seasons of marriage, attention must be given to one’s partner’s “needs.”
Appropriate time and attention must be devoted to each other’s physical needs in marriage. Exercise, nutrition, affection and sex are all much better when shared by two! Encourage and participate in mental and spiritual growth opportunities together. Frequent trips to the library and regular worship give couples mental and spiritual stimulation for growth.
With physical, mental and spiritual needs respected and attended to, a blossoming and emotionally healthy marriage is the likely result.
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