I Fight With Flowers

If I may, I have a quick thought about the times we are living in.

It started in May of 2020, we had been isolated for a pile of weeks and I would lay awake at night thinking about the children in our little ministry. What a very strange experience and so impossible to explain. I knew they would never get that summer back. I was choking on my concern for them and how strange the world had become. That is where it started, I felt a determination inside my heart to try to figure out a way to still have fun. They next day I called all their mom’s and asked if I could come visit and all but one said yes.

I went every week. I brought a couple teenagers with me and we did crafts and songs and played with their toys and it was pure magic- we were careful, and thankfully none of us got sick at all that summer and fall.

Another thought, in 2002 Elizabeth Smart was a young girl abducted from her very own bedroom- she was taken away and horrifically abused for nine months. Then she was rescued and returned to her home, and on her first night back her mother hugged her tight and spoke words of power and rescue, “Elizabeth, don’t let him have one more day of your life. Let your joy be your revenge.”

Let your joy be your revenge.

I have struggled with survivors guilt for most of my life.

I am a very blessed girl. I have been loved well.

I have known pain, in some seasons a fair amount of it- but even so-

I have always known about Jesus, I have always had food and clothes, I have always had family, I have always been celebrated on my birthday.

I have never been without shelter or love. I have always had some form of a Church.

I can’t know why I have been so blessed when millions of people have lived without, I have struggled with this for a long while. At times it seemed that I should walk around in sadness to honor all the suffering, and I have certainly done that- and maybe it was appropriate for a season.

How could I eat a feast in front of so many starving?

It has been a very hard question to answer...I still can’t answer it,

but I do have a deepening resolve to live. To really live, to live in the face of so much despair- kind of like what Elizabeth’s Mom told her.

I live a very simple, but important life.

The outside doesn’t match the inside.

Inside I am slaying giants, outside I am coloring with children

Inside I am Gandalf holding the bridge, outside I am making pancakes

Inside I am carrying a nation and grieving a generation, outside I am planting flowers

I fight with flowers. I pray with the birds. I sing with children.

My weapons are a porch swing, a crayon, and a mixing bowl- I am always trying to figure out how to have fun and adventures with teenagers and children and my family. Joy has become my response to a world that seems eager to eclipse light and hope.

The darker it gets, the brighter I will shine. The more despair shouts, the more daffodils I will plant, the more divided the culture gets, the more cookies I will bake. The more cynical the times, the louder I will sing with the children.

I don’t know why I have survived, I can’t answer that question- but I can keep the light on, and the fridge full, the vases full of flowers, and the music on. This is what I choose to do in these times.

If the darkness ever squeezes in on every side of me, then it will find me dancing with children. I suspicion that our giggles will keep the lights on, just like Monsters, Inc.