Fleeting Wildflowers

February 4, 2024 Georgia Tanner

He knows our lives are short, that they are like grass.

He knows we are like a little wildflower that grows so quickly,

but when the hot wind blows, it dies.

Soon, you cannot even see where the flower was. Psalm 103:15-16 ERV

“Would you like to sign up for a tour?” Mikah asked in all seriousness with a hopeful smile on her face. She had politely interrupted the always ongoing conversation between her mother and me. She held a notepad and pen in hand. All that was needed to take a guided tour through my home was my name, my phone number, and the time I was requesting. Of course, that specific time wasn’t avahilable because she had a previous appointment, but she could take me at 1:35 instead (five minutes later) if that worked for me.

With a loop of long-ago discarded keys in hand, she led me (and her mother, my niece) from room to room, stepping over her 3-year-old brother playing with the floor-size alphabet puzzle, around Jeff and the dog in a ferocious game of tug of war. After completing the circle of bedroom and bathroom and office as she pointed out highlights of the 'community', we ended up in the kitchen where she presented with an open arm "…the cookie making counter; suitable for making Christmas cookies and Hanukah cookies and well, really any holiday cookies…”

Great idea! What is the next holiday on the calendar? Why don't we make Valentine's cookies? That evolved into also making Valentines. In my mind, I imagined the dining table spread with cut-out red and pink hearts and paper white lace doilies, ribbons, and markers. We set the date, sent out the text to the family, and requested prompt RSVPs. Why have I never done this before, I wondered?

The last year my life has been on hold. My constant companion was an apple-green notebook filled with to-do lists that included notes from appointments with painters, plumbers, and pool repairmen. I packed and unpacked boxes with old photographs and crystal and sorted receipts and scrubbed the grout in the 1960s white tile bathroom in my mother's house.

And then there was the exterior fire at my own house that the firemen expertly extinguished by cutting through walls; tearing away exterior steel siding, and fluffy pink insulation until they reached into the bubbling paint on the sheetrock inside. There was less water damage than you would expect. The carpet in the bedroom would be replaced due to shattered glass from a desk that exploded when the saw cut through the wall. But if we replace the carpet in one bedroom, now would be the time to replace the carpet in its adjacent twin. The hallway could be repaired with a good professional cleaning and waxing. And that hallway opened into a small den, so all that furniture would need to come out also to properly address the floors. And we bought the paint two summers ago to repaint the high-ceilinged hall - so now would be the time to do that also. Which means the floor-to-ceiling folk art and photographs need to come down and be bubble-wrapped.

All this to explain why we have a storage unit in our driveway and our family room is filled with folding tables with stuff: lamps and books and all the odds and ends I don’t know what to do with – much of it will find its way back into the four closets we had to unload. Including the four wire bins of art supplies and craft projects.

And all of this is a long way to explain to me my ongoing sorrow and impatience pushed down below the surface. I have missed my people. I have missed family stretched out around the fireplace or gathering at the dining table for a meal. There has been no room for people. Barely room for all the misplaced stuff.

I am weary of the chaos and the waiting for the contractor and the county inspector and really just heavy from all the things in my life. Things instead of people.

The Holy Spirit whispers in my ear that the days are short. Life is a fragile thing. Relationships need to be nurtured gently, held in a carefully cupped hand. The prophets in my morning readings remind me that we are flowers quickly fading. Soon we will be dust, blown away by the wind, gone, forgotten.

Jeff flipped through an ancient book I had pulled off the shelf in my determined sorting. It was from the farmhouse in rural Alabama he and his brother had cleaned out after his father died. There was a date and a name handwritten in ink inside the disintegrating fabric cover. A brown newspaper clipping of a high school dance. The pressed remains of what must have been a corsage. A hundred years had come and gone. We didn’t know the young girl who had longed to hold onto the beautiful things in her short life.

Last Sunday afternoon my daughter pulled the stacks of figure drawings, paintings and photographs out from under one of the beds soon to be moved. Our two children majoring in art left a lot of projects hidden away here. One drawing she pulled out I will keep. It is a very stylized overhead floor plan in teenage girl pinks and purples of our house, room by room. Furniture is carefully represented: rectangular sofas, round circles for chairs, the almost square beds, smaller circle side tables, and desks in almost every room. I can tell by the layout it reflects our home when she was in college. "I had wanted to represent how welcoming our house was. There were so many places to sit together."

That simple drawing and her sweet words touched deep into my heart. I looked over at my son and grandson there in the bedroom with us sitting cross-legged on the floor sorting through a forgotten bin filled with paint guns, water guns, and a plastic battleship. I realized even in the mess and our lives turned upside down, we still have found a place to gather.

This is my call to keep my eyes focused on this day and the people I love. The people God has placed in my life. To let go of the stuff that threatens to get in the way, to take up too much room, to take up too much thought.

Even in the mess and responsibility of life – as I say these words to myself, let me share them with you – place the call to gather together. Say no to the good opportunities if they are not your top priority. Open your hands to let go of all the stuff. Clear off a chair. Set the table. Open the door. Open your arms to hug the ones you love.

The rest of the verse where we started:

The life of mortals is like grass,

they flourish like a flower of the field;

the wind blows over it and it is gone,

and its place remembers it no more.

But from everlasting to everlasting

the Lord's love is with those who fear him,

and his righteousness with their children's children—

with those who keep his covenant

and remember to obey his precepts. Psalm 103:15-18 NIV

Questions: What is most important to you? Who is most important to you? Consider sending them a Valentine. And how are you embracing the short time here you have?

"Sweet Ever After" feat. Bear Rinehart | Ellie Holcomb

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu0Yhh1D0ks

Note: Photos are from our short-notice Valentine's card-making and cookie-decorating party yesterday. Thank you, Mikah for the tour that started the party!

Easy-to-Read Version (ERV)

New International Version (NIV)