An Unexpected Bloom

how a bouquet of flowers planted a seed

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Issue #6/ Welcome to Good and Beautiful Things, thanks for joining me in this space.

Cindi gave me the flowers during a particularly ugly time in my life. It was not that my life was ugly but that I felt ugly. A mess. Inside and out.

I was nearly thirty and a mom of three young kids. My body had morphed after the arrival of my second child and grown even less familiar by my third. My youngest child spit up copious amounts of milk, so much so that I’d taken to keeping a large towel on my shoulder instead of those thin, useless burp rags. I smelled like sour vomit, my clothes never fit right and I was doing a job no one had prepared me for.

I didn’t know how to do anything that I was supposed to be doing. I didn’t know how to be a full-time, stay at home, homeschooling mom. I didn’t know how to make edible meals for my husband at the end of the day or how to have the house tidied up by the time he got home. Our little house was bursting with Playmobil, dress up clothes and discarded sheets from the forts the kids had made. By 4:30pm every day, I was counting the minutes for my husband to arrive home and get in the trenches with me or relieve me from duty. 

Cindi was in the Bible Study I led at church. (Leading Bible Study was another thing I didn’t know how to do.) She was younger than my mother but older than me at the time, maybe mid-forties? She had long gray hair and for whatever reason she adopted me for a season. She sent me encouraging cards, she hugged me when she saw me at church. She always had a smile for me when I arrived harried and a little dazed.

One day she came into Bible Study and handed me a bouquet of roses. Included with the flowers was a note that said something encouraging, I can’t remember the exact words now. I just remember they were words I never would have thought true of myself. The only thing I could see about myself was the gap between how I thought a mother and wife should be and the reality I saw reflected in the mirror.

What have I done to deserve these flowers? Don’t you give flowers to someone after a theatrical performance, because they’ve done something of excellence?

And yet.

With those unexpected blooms, a small seed of belief was planted. A mustard seed. 

Maybe I am lovable.

Through Cindi’s persistent acts of love, the Lord pursued my heart. Centimeter by centimeter, he began opening my heart to a love that I didn’t have to earn. 

I lost track of Cindi soon after the Bible Study ended and I’m sure she had no idea that I would be writing about those flowers fifteen years later. But the roots of that mustard seed continue to grow and deepen and now, when I am lucky, I get to be the one to help plant the seeds.

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Words to Remember

“Do not leave
without hearing
who you are:
Beloved,
named by the One,
who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go
without letting it echo
in your ears,
and if you find
it is hard
to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what
the journey is for.”

-Jan Richardson, excerpt of Beloved is Where We Begin

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From the Sketchbook Archives

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Favorite Finds

A Poem

Jan Richardson is a wonderful poet and artist and I highly recommend you spend a few minutes with the entire poem, Beloved is Where We Begin.

A Lenten Devotional

A fellow writer has published her first book just in time for Lent. Check out Lent through the Little Things: Encountering Jesus through Life’s Ordinary Moments by Linda Hanstra. You can sign up to get a sample of the first four reflections as well as read an excerpt on her website.

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A Blessing

May God bring some unexpected blooms
into your life this week.

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Blessings from the Guest Nest,

-Aimee

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