Mother’s Day Flowers

We bring great healing to the world 
When we choose to see others

We all need to be seen.

It only truly matters that we are seen by our Maker,
But while we are down here in a world that is
Tattered and broken,
Often so distant from the one who defines us,
There is a loneliness that erodes our sense of truth
When we are not genuinely seen by those who are near.
We bring great healing to the world
When we choose to see others:
Their hope, Their pain, Their struggles,
Those maddening joys mixed with fear.
On Mother’s Day my husband and I wandered the grocery store,
Perusing veggies and planning lunch.
Only a few close family and friends knew I was pregnant.
My motherhood. My love for my child. All of it,
Was real to me, yet so broadly unseen.
I felt a sort of insecurity
That what mattered most to me didn’t really “count” yet.
“Happy Mother’s day,” said Chase,
As he handed me a pot of yellow flowers in the market aisle.
I gripped the gift with both hands.
“You’re a really good mom,” he said.
That planted a seed in me, that continues to bear good fruit.
We heal when we are known.
And we share that healing when we choose to know another.
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Flourish

I was so old a year ago. I am much younger now.

How do I describe it? How do I put into words this season that rolls so slowly it’s almost still, and yet, so rapidly I’m frightened I might miss it? How do I describe this peace? It comes with dinner in the evening and laughing with my husband over a game of cards until my abs hurt. And how my abs hurt. Stretched from growing life and running and lifting for as long as I still can, then bending over for hours at a time so my face can get that much closer to the page in front of me so as to savor every syllable. And then all of me is stretched again. What is the word for all that?

How do you tell a story about a honeymoon that takes place two whole years after a wedding, and 1500 miles away? Nowhere fancy. Just a two-bedroom apartment, with a dog who uses the living room as his playground. How do I explain being so excited to meet our child, but never wanting these days of just the two of us, and a dog, to end? Or wanting to hold him in my arms but never wanting to know a day when I no longer feel him within my center?

I was so old a year ago. I am much younger now.

There’s peace in the trees that I watch in the mornings. It looks like sunlight through the leaves. And joy. I don’t have to remind myself it’s there, deep beneath the surface. No, it pours out like rich wine. A heartbeat, so much faster than mine but still in rhythm with the same music. How do I describe that? Kicks and flutters. Knowing so thoroughly someone I’ve never seen?

And then that freedom. How do I describe that state of being when you no longer have to fight to simply be? When you’ve washed off every dirty scrape and aching bruise, first with a cold blast, and then with warm water silky like lavender. And then you love fuller and wider. You see clearer. You live. You grow.

What is the word for all of that?