Flowers fill me. Their beauty and fragrance fill me with peace and joy. 

So I keep seeking flowers.

And oh how I have found them anew this spring, lifting my soul from winter’s clutch to a world again of color, hope, and becoming.

I could get technical and talk about the nervous system and how calming they are to me, how the repetitive reception of experiencing their beauty, I believe, is forming new neural pathways in my brain, and all that I think is true. 

Or I could get spiritual and talk about how I believe flowers are one of God’s creative gifts to bring comfort and delight, and how I am oh so grateful for them.

Perhaps from a creative perspective, I could tell you about the thrill of capturing  soft light to illuminate the petals of azaela at sunset, or my pastels to find the perfect shade of a hibiscus’ pink.

Will I write more, maybe a book on flowers? Perhaps. There’s the stories of my grandmother’s gardens and the floral love they instilled. The garden I once lovingly tended while life was falling apart, and how I think it was actually those blooms that were caring for me. Or the Dutch garden I wandered after my return from rock bottom, where the innocence of stately tulips helped me remember that good still existed in the world. 

For now, I imagine my own dream garden… one day. Sometimes I cry over the elusiveness of that future. Yet lately, so filled with flowers, I’m serene enough to just believe in the dream. To plant seeds in my imagination. The more gardens I see, the more flowers I discover, the more the vision grows.

Today, I waited till a rainstorm rolled by, before Hunter and I embarked on our morning walk. A neighbor close by is blessed with a green thumb and a healthy landscaping budget, and I look forward to walking by each day and often surreptitiously snap a pic. I’ve watched for a few weeks now as her peonies came up from the earth again, and then as the buds appeared, so close to breaking open lately. This morning a few petals appeared, laden with raindrops like perfect tears caught in a gentle embrace.

Evening came and we ventured out again, after the afternoon sunshine had beamed for a few hours. I had to pull the dog back in shock – her peonies had bloomed, full petals opened to the sky! A transformation from morning till evening, and what if I’d been too busy to walk today… to notice what was happening, this beauty outside my doorstep?

If only these flowers knew, all that they do for my soul to renew, each spring day after spring day. Each year after year. Might they bloom brighter? So I thank God, the creator of the clematis, iris, and lilac. I breathe in gratitude. I breathe out grief. 

We continued on our walk (yes, after I snapped a few pics, not caring if she caught me). And I kept thinking about those flowers. My bloom isn’t on the way, or in the past, it’s here and now. Isn’t that how I want to be? Beauty and a breath of grace, for anyone who encounters me?

We’re all desperate for hope! For love, secure. For peace from the chaos of this world that’s now filled with devices that are making us all a little more crazy.

So maybe… what if we all tried to be more like the flowers? We’ll fade eventually, because we’re also fragile like the flowers and born to die one day. But we’re also born to bloom. To let our essence be the beauty that turns someone’s day around.

For now, that’s the story I’ll share. 

I’ll keep seeking flowers, and being one, too. Won’t you?