Do you have a lifelong love? An interest or passion you’ve held since childhood?
Mine is flowers. I can’t remember not loving them. I look back through years of albums and there they are – random pics of lilies, roses, daisies, etc.
When we were little and living in Connecticut, my sister and I made chains out of dandelions and white clover (they looked like flowers to us!) and draped them around our heads and necks. We were princesses, ruling our tiny brick patio kingdom and its fuzzy caterpillars which we collected in Cool Whip bins lined with lush green leaves.
Flowers remind me that life – while fleeting – typically unfolds slowly. It should be colorful. Varied. Fragrant. Blooms and blossoms are part of a cycle which points to never-ending beauty.
Apparently, I was treasuring flowers even before I started making those dandelion chains. In the spring of 1975 when I was 2 and my dad (a Coast Guard officer) was out at sea, my mother and I rode the train down to Washington, DC, to see my dad’s parents who were living there for a short time while my grandfather took a work assignment from Boeing. We visited Mount Vernon, and I immersed myself in tulips.
For the next 40 years, that photo hung in my grandparents’ kitchen after they returned home to Seattle, WA, a treasured memory of a special day and a granddaughter they loved so much.
When I was 20, I visited the Keukenhof Gardens in Lisse, Netherlands, when the tulips were in full bloom. If you ever have the chance to go – go. The colors were extraordinary. And I thought of my grandparents’ photo and asked my friends to help me reenact it on the spot.
When I look at these two pictures – especially the first one – I realize that my childhood still has lessons to teach me. And here are three simple ones:
1) Rushing is learned. When I was following my whims and exploring those tulips – which were at eye-level when I was 2 – I felt no pressure. How often do we allow others to
2) We have 5 senses. This may seem like a silly statement, but really – do you ever just stop – and sniff? Taste? Look? Listen to the natural world? My mind is a whirl of information and I can go days without appreciating the scent of my child’s hair, all the flavors in every meal, or the concert the doves, cardinals, and finches perform outside my windows every single morning. Are you reveling in the world’s delights like a child does? Like you did when you were very, very young?
3) Someone is looking out for us. Toddling among the tulips, I knew my mother and grandparents were close by and I was safe to explore. Small children are innately trusting because they can’t do anything for themselves. But along the way we develop skills to help us navigate, and then we become arrogant. We begin to think we’re actually in control. But that’s a lie. None of us is fully responsible for where we’ve ended up. Some individual somewhere along the way was kind to each of us, gave us a piece of advice, or opened a door of opportunity that enabled us to become the people we are. Today, let’s offer gratitude for that person (or people), and acknowledge the possibility that his or her involvement was not an accident or coincidence, but a movement of affection by a divine Source of Love that wants us all to enjoy a fuller, richer existence.
Our childhood selves – the purest, most untroubled versions – believed and hoped and loved boldly before we were ever told there were limits. We moved at our natural pace, opened ourselves to life’s wonders, and trusted that all would be well.
Though we learned that people – even ourselves – can let us down, God has promised us that He never will.
Our Father in heaven longs for us to follow Him with a childlike love – a faith and hope without
