Monday, November 14, 2011

Sunflowers

Sometimes it is very difficult to take a tragedy and turn things around and get yourself moving again. Probably, the fact that no one is waiting on you to heal makes it harder; you have to make that turn before you are ready and try to put one foot in front of the other. But you can, and sometimes you do.
This morning as I left to pick up biscuits—a dull and meaningless task on the list of pointless things that happen each day, I noticed the sunflowers. We have lots of children who live in our neighborhood, and my children and these neighbors love growing sunflowers. They grow easily, they come up thick and strong and then when they get to a height where the mommas are starting to think, these flowers are just silly, garish weeds and they must come down for the sake of the people who have to look at my house! and then, they sprout a blossom. A very large blossom that really isn’t that pretty sitting seven feet up in the air, but it delights that child that put it there. So we all have these giant strange bodies in our yards, and when we were hit by a hurricane last week, they all had two days of wind and rain battering them. So now they stand, tall and thick, with sadly drooping heads. The winds and rain made our poor sunny sunflowers’ heads heavy and tired, and they droop. Sigh.

But as I listened to the cheery Kindie Rock station, singing a song about a happy butterfly, I felt for those poor sunflowers. Our lives blow them around, and they droop, but still stand. And we have to be resilient enough to keep standing despite.