Do not underestimate the grocery store flowers! That’s what I told my husband once, and he has not forgotten. He brings me flowers almost every Friday evening when he gets home from work. For around $10 he makes me so happy with a bundle of blooms wrapped in plastic. These flowers go into a pretty vase, then placed on the table next to “my spot” in my living room. Here I can really drink them in, I can look at them and enjoy each day that they remain bright and upright. My Friday grocery store flowers are a bright spot for the rest of the week.
Flowers express love. Flowers celebrate life’s events. We take flowers to those who are hurting and healing to brighten the space around them, to bring hope to a place where there is pain. But, a flower is still so temporary. A week long lifespan is so short. Once a flower is cut, its life is lost in a matter of days. When you think about it, a bouquet for the grieving might be counterintuitive. But the truth is, there is more to a flower than the bloom. When we gift a bouquet to someone, we are reminding them of something so good and true, something smooth and easy, something we easily lose touch with in the mash-up of our own agendas. What we are coveting in a vase of flowers is actually the beautiful cultivation of God’s love. We may be enjoying the colorful bloom, but there was so much He did before the full fruition. There was Love flowing through that plant long before it’s glorious color burst to life.
Love is, after all, the end all, be all. Love is the corner stone of everything faithful; it is the reason, the purpose. Love cultivates and nurtures our life. And, like Robert, many of us use flowers to represent our love, to keep it watered and fed. Flowers resonate with us, but there is a great difference between us and a flower, aside from the obvious, and it has to do with love and the way it flows.
A plant is a better recipient than we are. Flowers do not resist the particular way God flows through it’s life. The flower has no fear or worry about the conditions of which it is planted in, about what is surrounding it as it grows, or what people will say about its color or shape, or how long it is taking to get to the blooming phase. It has no alternative ideas for itself, either. The flower has trust, and it flows smoothly and easily into it’s eventual full blossom without resisting. And, it is lovely. So, how can we learn from a flower? How can we bloom without resisting? How can we become our best selves, the easy way that a flower grows? And, is that even possible??
The earth is full of these smooth, easy rhythms and patterns, cycles and sequences which we rely on. We don’t wonder or worry whether the sun will rise itself each day. We just go with the flow in the rhythm that has always been. In the morning we wake up, and we start a new day. We do the things on our list, and at night we go to bed, and we rest our eyes, our minds and our hearts. But, what happens when we fall out of that rhythm?… when we resist it? when we deny our body’s natural cycle? What happens is, we feel bad. We ache in all kinds of places. Our straining eyes make our heads hurt, our heavy bodies sink and drag, and our hearts lose focus. We lug ourself around like dead weight. Our resistance to the natural flow makes us weak and less capable.
My own resistance resulted in my getting stuck between two days; a frustrating sensation of feeling caught in a transition. This night-like period restricted me from flowing into the next day of my life. I had no rhythm, just random. My priorities weren’t designated, they were dispersed. I needed to get things in order, get my shit together, if you will. I needed organization, segmentation in my life….compartmentalization (the healthy kind). I could go on… Bottom line; when we feel scattered and unfocused, we are. But, the trouble is, many of us have become so used to a slow flow, an unnatural rhythm, that we don’t even feel it. Many don’t even sense the slow flow because it doesn’t feel slow at all when our bodies are moving so damn fast all damn day. I hate to speak for you, but I feel as though I can speak for almost all of us when I say that our drains are clogged with our own plans. We make too many assumptions as to how we are suppose to live. It’s the keeping up with one another that has us unable to find our own flow, the flow of God, and that gets exhausting. Wrestling with resistance brings on physical, mental and emotional exhaustion… So then what? How does it stop? How do we slow our roll? Well, for me that screeching stop was the sound of the pain train rollin’ into town. Again.
Now, I thought I had already been drug down that track….through that mud. I thought I had already learned my lesson from pain, and I thought I was working with the lessons God wanted me to know. I thought I was doing good, too! I thought it was time to move on from my experience with grief and ache, to climb out of the muddy pit and live in the warm light. I thought wrong. Maybe I was wrong because I thought. Because I was assuming. What I know for sure is that we assume too much, and by assuming we create resistance.
I don’t think God likes it when we assume. In fact, I know He doesn’t.
Go back to that flower. What if, as it was growing and sprouting, leaf by leaf, assuming all the while it was going to become a mighty oak, but in fact, God had planted this seed to grow into a rose. Now, what the hell would that rose look like if it had resisted it's intended plan and decided, on its own, to force its little self to be a big, mighty oak tree?? Would it ever become that coveted, delicate bloom of gorgeous color if it presumed its own intentions? I have to believe that, like us, when we resist the flow, that sprout of lovely potential would have failed to bloom. It would have assumed other duties and never become the beautiful thing that God intended. How sad is that? It would never become the bloom we use to represent love itself.
See? A flower does not do that! It does not resist God’s loving plans like we do. Therefore, when we become slow and clogged, something’s gotta give, and it’s gonna get messy. Picture Roto-Rooter in your pretty bathroom.
As I am writing this, I sit in my new studio. This is the space I made to compartmentalize my mess, to segment out the pile of life I found myself within; home, work, rest, play, eat, sleep, cook, clean… Way too many things were trying to happen in the same space, the same one I was using to do this work, the work I feel called to do. I could no longer hear or see with all that other stuff in the way. So here I am, but I have yet to paint here. I cannot wait to start painting here, but God has sat me in this desk chair instead, with words bubbling up in my heart and out of my finger tips. I am clicking and clacking out a story about a flower which I have never heard before. I have never sensed this narrative until this very moment in time. However, I have had patterns forming in my world lately. I knew He was getting my attention through repetition. I began to recognize that if I didn’t make any assumptions as to how this was going to come together, if I didn’t assume anything about what these patterns meant, or make my own presumptions on when to write and when to paint, something more purposeful, more intended would flow. So. I sit here, anxious to paint but writing instead. I sit here surrounded by notes, realizations and inspirations, the perceptions that came to me while I was driving, while I was walking around in my life, and now these patterns are feeding this essay. The stunning, ancient oaks outside the enormous windows are integrating into my words, as well. What I am experiencing now is the flow, and the less I resist it with my own assumptions, the more it runs.
Ok, back up. How did I get here, to this room, in this place where I know to reject my own agenda in favor of something seemingly counterproductive? Well, I’ll tell ya, it was a painful process. By now I know something about pain. I know how it affects me. It has reworked me enough times for me to know that pain comes with a plan. God knows how I pay attention to pain. He knows I am stubborn and strong enough to bear it, too. So, He brought it on again recently, just as strong as ever because He needed my attention. He needed me to stop resisting His flow. Pain is an awful experience, but it is also a powerful device. You have to mind pain. We have to acknowledge it to get past it. (see C.S.Lewis on pain)
So, I assumed the position to bear my pain. Cuz, y’all, I been here before, and it did me no good to ignore the thing. This time, I was braver than I was in the past. I was not afraid. I faced it. Me to God: “Doing good right? I assume? Watch this! This is how you want me to be brave, yes? Are you watching?” (sounding like my kids on the diving board doing the same trick, different day.)
Then, as I rested and recovered, as I sat still and quiet, I saw something; a vision, and I knew, when I was well, I wouldn’t be returning to the same studio. I saw myself, painting, but not in the cramped home studio I had stood in just days before. I was in one of the spaces I visited as I was looking for a new studio. The space was in the historical Oakleigh district of Mobile. The one that seemed so obvious that I assumed it couldn’t be the one for me, because I presumed it wasn’t gonna be that easy to find it. What are the odds that I would find my new studio in a space that was already a studio for another artist, one I have known for years? What are the odds that it was in a neighborhood that I daydreamed of living in? What are the odds?! With this vision, I realized it isn’t my right to assume. The odds do not matter. It can be that easy, as long as I am not resisting. With this vision, I realized that a space had been made for me to do His work, the table had been set, and all I had to do was accept the invitation. It was sitting down there, waiting for me; waiting for me to rest and refocus, to get my act together, to go with The Flow. All I had to do was stop resisting…. and make some phone calls from bed.
“Ok, God. Now, I really did it. Did you see me back there?! I stopped what I was doing, I rested and healed and refocused. I signed that lease. Boom! I’m back baby. I am ready to carry on. I am ready to flow again! Let’s do this thing!!”
But, no. I could see patterns forming, I could see myself getting warmer, but I could not catch the rhythm. I could not carry on.
So, what’s the deal? How’d this happen? I still felt stuck in transition. I couldn’t wake up in this new day. And that felt urgently helpless. I began losing hope and speed by the day…. What’s the deal!? That was scary right, those thing I did? I trusted, and I acted. I have really gotten to know my way around fear, and I didn’t let it stop me from making those bold moves …. I did not let fear keep me stuck in my cramped studio, nor did I let fear keep me in company with pain. I faced that shit, and it was not easy! Don’t I get a token, a certificate of completion? And, then…. I realized, there was more. He practically spelled it out for me. Sarah, that did not contain fear. These things did not make you tremble.
Fear, true fear, is what clogs the drain, resists the flow of God into our lives. True fear was damning a river that begged to flow.
I had faced the fears of loss and pain and failure before. It seems to me now, once we squander a fear, we don’t have to do it again. Because once we know the truth about what that fear is made of (= empty threats) it doesn’t truly scare us anymore. Nervous? Yes. Sweaty palms? Yes. But not trembling hands… because we know now that He was with us before, and He will be again. I am not alone. It was clear that there was more to this. There was more that had to be sorted out and cleared up before I could get my groove back (like Stella). I knew I had to say somethings to someone whom I love, but I really. didn’t. want to. I had to shine light on the shadowy corners, the places we don’t go. I had to clear out the clutter that was getting in the way- at the risk of being misunderstood, at the risk of us both getting hurt, at the risk of working with words that were too sharp to handle. (gah words are tricky like fear….). Then, He took my right hand, and I did what scared me more than anything ever has. I said the words as I shook like someone had a hold of my shoulders, as my hands flapped like fish in my lap.
hhuuuu…hhhaaa…. Deep breath. That was fear, face to face, trying to convenience me to stop short of fully living, fully flowing, fully loving.
For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you,
do not fear; I will help you.
Isaiah 41:13
Now, as I conclude this essay, weeks after I initially began it with those comparisons to a flower, I sit at my dining room table surrounded by rosy, canyon-like color. Robert just painted this color on our walls. (I’d like to say I helped, but I am a terrible painter of houses.) I adore this color. It even reminds me of people I love. It is a deep coral pink, and the name of it is, “Sharon Rose”. There it is; another rhythm. This term represents: love, healing, beauty, Christ and Christians…. among other things.
I’m within my rhythm, now. Patterns are forming as themes bubble to the surface. Themes like:
-roses & oaks
-waters & fires
-healing & resting
- birth
-canyons
-Isaiah
-and of course color and light, woven through it all
There are still more. And, they all speak strong truths. Recognizing the rhythm of these themes restored the easy flow. This work of clinging to the patterns and epiphanies that were showing up for me, this commitment to trusting them and expressing them, this is what makes something intended flow through me. This is when I let myself grow and sprout in the ways He intended when I was planted. This essay and these paintings are the products of Love. Even though these words and colors flow through my hands, this work is for is all. My hands are only tools.
When do you feel the flow most? What washes the resistance away? Lean in to those times, those themes. Cling to them. Follow that river, and see where it takes you.
Ok now, I’m asking you to take a minute, to slow your roll. You can do it. The things will wait. I promise. Take a breath, and read this next paragraph slowly. Maybe even close your eyes, and take a good, long breath between sentences.
Imagine yourself down in a dark valley, in a desert canyon where light is scarce. Here you don’t get to assume anything. In the dark, without sight, we cannot find our own way. We can’t even see the natural cycles of day and night down here. In this moment we are forced to be slow, quiet and intuitive. It is so quiet down here. It is so dark. Here the flow moves within us without the resistance of our own knowledge, our own sight, our own assumptions. And, when we sense the slightest tinge of light, we let it guide the way, we lean its direction. Without all the noise of our knowledge, the flow is smooth and easy.
When the heavy stacks of life finally pushed me down there, into those canyons, that was when I felt that. Within the quiet stillness, I saw the rich, deep colors of the paintings I had yet to paint. Have you ever stood in a dim sanctuary and been magnetically hypnotized by a stained glass window and the light penetrating through the panes? That! That’s what I want you to imagine.
As I eventually began painting in my new studio, I was in it; the river flowed through me like a a damn had been broken. I denied access to anything that might get in its way, anything that wanted to clog this flow. I let Love run through me, from my heart through my hand. I made colors as rich as they were in my vision, as dense and piercing as they were in a particular stained glass window of a dark sanctuary. As I placed the colors, I knew it was the valley of darkness that gave me this perception of color. I was seeing this color because of the valley, not in spite of it; such a generous vision that I literally thanked God for taking me through such darkness in these recent years. He knew all along. He knew what was coming, and He was clearing the way.
People ask me why I talk and write about fear so much. Well, not long ago, someone caught me off guard and said, with a big laughing grin, “Sarah, what are you so afraid of???” To this person, I laughed, but later I felt embarrassed and terribly misunderstood. Which is, funny enough, one of my most common fears; I have an insecurity about being misunderstood, particularly for being mistaken for someone without good intentions. And, this question I was asked, put the slightest tinge of black fear into my color. It resulted in my losing the courage to talk about “fear” itself for far too many months, the way I knew I was being asked to, the way I knew I was tasked to verbally squander the empty threats of fear that hold so many of us back. This tiny pinch of black fear muddied my colors, and that is exactly what it wanted out of me. Fear created my resistance and slowed the flow of Love; it intersected what God was asking me to do with my hand and my heart, with my artistic gifts. If that wasn’t the enemy at work!? Do you see it? Does this burn off the fluff surrounding what is true? FEAR is a lie and the enemy’s weapon against LOVE.
We are as simple, yet as dynamic as the life of a flower. We are worthy of living and blooming that beautifully. Without our own assumptions and presumptions, our schedules and earthly goals, we are free to grow and blossom in extraordinary, colorful ways. Love is trying to find its flow, will you help it run? Love wants to surge through everything you know, all that you do and say, every place that you go, and it is capable doing so, the way water trickles around even the barriers made of dense rock. Rivers run through deep, dark canyons so that we will know we are never without Water; we are never too far gone. Through all our days, especially the dark ones, may we clear the way for the easy river, and drink from it with a gracious heart.
