I finally realize I am a tomato plant. I am flowering, but I am not yet fruiting. That does not mean I am failing at being a tomato plant; it means I am growing. Not only is it natural, it is necessary. Pride and impatience leave me wanting to be fruitful now—but this is the stage in which virtues are grown. Without it (and accepting that it is a long, slow process), I will merely produce stunted humility and patience and prudence and—and everything necessary to become a truly fruitful tomato plant. Ironic, isn’t it, that if I do not embrace these days in which I often feel terribly incomplete and disappointing, I will not become all I can be.
Thus I show my young, delicate flowers to the sun and wait for the rain.
