Letters to His Roses

Dear Roses, “There is no need to be dismayed if love sometimes follows torturous ways. Grace has the power to make straight the paths of human love.” This quote by St. John Paul the Great has given me much to ponder. Here is a bit of my pondering…. May we be unafraid to invite Jesus into the secret depths of our hearts so He can pour His healing grace upon all our wounds especially those caused by the “torturous ways of human love.” For by His grace, our hearts are made new and we are empowered to love Him and others as though we had never been wounded. God has promised to give us a new heart, ”I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you” Ezekiel 36:26, and Jesus wants to give us His very own Heart. One of my go-to prayers for years has been, “Jesus, meek and humble of he...

Dear Roses, As I drew the image below, I contemplated the Light, Christ, the Light of the world, that Our Lady bore within her very being… she opened her womb to God’s Plan as she had already opened her heart… and He filled her with His very Self… God the Creator of the Universe become one with our humanity within the womb more spacious than the heavens. I drew through tear-blinded eyes overcome by Love… the immensity of His Love and Light and her love… love of God that caused her to unhesitatingly say “Yes”… her love of us, of all her children, and of her precious Son, that caused her to bear, to birth, to mother, and to suffer with our Savior… how did she bear His Pure Light and Love within her finite yet sacred body and not just burst into brill...

Dear Roses, I give thanks to our God at every remembrance of you. I am so grateful for your continued prayers for my healing. Know that I am keeping each of you and your intentions in my daily prayers. This time of rest and physical healing gifts me with time of stillness and quiet to pray and reflect. And so, today’s letter is a brief reflection on my experience of speaking heart to Heart with Jesus hidden in the tabernacle. Even after the night that Jesus miraculously healed my chronic physical and mental illness there was still much healing work to be done in my heart. I was drawn by the gentle yet overwhelming and irresistible force of His Love in the Eucharist. I began going to daily Mass and found that I just could not leave the church afterwards. I spent every free moment I could fi...

Dear Roses, On June 24th 2019, I said “Yes” to Jesus the Bridegroom’s proposal to consecrate my heart and soul to Him by making a private betrothal promise. The waterfall of healing, grace, and pure love He has showered on me this past year is amazing! I started Hope’s Garden as a means to sharing the beautiful healing truth of Christ the Bridegroom’s deeply personal and intimate spousal love for each and everyone of us. He is the one, true, eternal Spouse of every soul regardless of your vocation or state in life. He offers His unconditional love and only asks that we reciprocate by opening our wounded hearts to His loving gaze and saying “Yes, let it be done unto me according to Your word.” I urge you to place any fears, doubts, and disbelief into our Mother Mary’s hands and ask her to w...

Dear Roses, The Grace and Peace of God be with you! I am delighted to be writing to you again and sharing my love of the Bridegroom and His divine love song, The Song of Songs, with you. The Bridegroom’s love song is the root of all that is in bloom this autumn at Hope’s Garden. We will be live streaming the third session of our Eternally Loved Virtual Workshop tonight on our Facebook page. It is not too late to join us! Each session stands alone and offers many seeds for spiritual growth. Tonight’s talk by De Yarrison will focus on tending to the vineyard of our hearts so the focus of today’s letter is the verses from The Song of Songs that inspired this talk. “Take no notice of my swarthiness, it is the sun that has burnt me. My mother’s sons turned their anger on me, they made me look a...

Dear Roses, This past weekend was the two year anniversary of Jesus leading me out of the desert of divorce and into His freedom. On the very evening that my divorce was finalized He came to me as the radiant beautiful Bridegroom of The Song of Songs and asked me to be His bride. As my children would say… Jesus didn’t wait a hot second to reveal His desire for me to be all His! In that moment, my response was disbelief… “Me?? You cannot possibly want me. I am such a mess!” And yet He did and He does! Not just despite my wounds and imperfections but actually because of them!  And now, I can say with the Bride of The Song of Songs, “I am black but lovely, daughters of Jerusalem.” because my Lord and my Bridegroom loves me right here and now and His love heals, sanctifies, and red...

Dear Roses, “Return, return, O maid of Shulam!”  7:1 Praying this verse from The Song of Songs has been a key to maintaining my inner calm despite the chaos around me and anxious thoughts in my mind. Making it a frequent prayer is a reminder to pause, breathe deeply, and shift my focus, my thoughts, and my heart back to Jesus dwelling within me. As the bride of Christ, I am betrothed to Him Who is Peace; I am the “maid of Peace.” His peace that passes all understanding is mine if I choose to ask, to open, and to receive His peace again and again. And so when I feel myself becoming anxious and overwhelmed by the work and worries of life, by repeating slowly and prayerfully this Scripture, I choose to return interiorly to the One Who is my peace, the One Who is the Only One Necessary Thing. ...

Dear Roses, Are you hiding from Jesus? Do you often feel like a timid, frightened dove hiding her face, silencing her voice, guarding her heart from everyone including Jesus? Today the Bridegroom of your soul is singing this verse of The Song of Songs to you. “My dove, hiding in the clefts of the rock,  in the coverts of the cliff,       show me your face,       let me hear your voice;       for your voice is sweet       and your face is beautiful.” The Song of Songs 2:14 Saint Francis de Sales’ paraphrase of this verse speaks straight to my heart. “Let us go, arise, says the Bridegroom, get out of yourself, fly toward me my dove, my very beautiful love. . . . Come my very dearly beloved, and to see me more clearly, come to the window through which I am looking for you; come to contemplate...