Flower Power

If you are here, because you found a random bouquet of flowers – welcome! I hope your heart was touched by their beauty and your day was warmed by this simple act of kindness.

This month we have been talking about kindness on this blog and the challenge to hold onto it when the way is hard and difficult. Thank you for joining us for today’s story:

Flower Power

When I was a girl, the highlight of our summer was attending the Freeborn County Fair, held on the outskirts of my hometown, Albert Lea, MN. We were a 4-H family and all brought exhibits to be judged: flower arrangements, favorite recipes, crafts, garments and animals.

We basically lived at the fair for the week. We came in each morning to feed the animals and left in the evening, after the grandstand show. A highlight, for me, was the Demolition Derby where clunker cars would ram into each other, again and again, until only one car remained still running and was declared the Freeborn County Demolition Derby Champion.

We sat on the aluminum bleachers with our corn dogs, cotton candy or caramel apples, while cheering for our hometown boys from the surrounding communities of Emmons, Alden, Clarks Grove and Hollandale. Hard-working farmers with their jeans and boots, a cap advertising a seed company shading their eyes, with last names like Olson, Johnson, Peterson and Anderson (do you see a trend here?) would take a break from the fields for a night of serious smashing.

One year, one of these clunkers just up and died BEFORE the demolition derby. I don’t remember the details, but Dad acquired the vehicle and towed it onto our farm and parked it down by the barn. Daisies, tulips, violets and sunflowers sprouted on the door panels, the trunk, the hood and even the roof. We dubbed the car, Flower Power.

No matter how many flowers were painted on the chassis, the car was originally intended for one purpose and one purpose only – demolition.

Do you find that sometimes we paint our lives with crowded schedules and eye shadow and pretty words, but we can’t cover up what is going on in the deepest part of our hearts?

Do you find that hard, difficult places have a way of stripping off the paint job and revealing what is under the hood?

When cancer came to try to take it all, my mother fought hard to not let cancer define her beauty as she wore earrings to the hospital and grabbed her tube of lipstick as we headed again to the E.R.

And when cancer managed to strip her down, Mom revealed what was inside … for all to see.

I remember a receptionist in Mom’s hometown, who came around her desk to talk to me and my sister, when Mom had left the room. “I have had my own issues of loss,” the receptionist said, “but I have watched your mother all these months and have watched her deal with her loss with such grace…” Her voice faded as she cleared her throat.

“I need to relook at my own anger issues with God,” the receptionist said.

My mother, who welcomed doctors into their own exam rooms, had this effect on people.

Romans 2:4 says it is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance. Did you catch that?

Kindness can lead people to look once again into the face of God.

We, who are the image bearers of God, hold a key. We, who are Christ’s hands and feet on this earth, have the ability to open the door that leads people back to God. That key is kindness.

Proverbs 3:1 states, “Do not let kindness and truth leave you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart.”

When we find ourselves hit from all sides … when we find our faith smashed again and again … when we find ourselves living in our own demolition derby …we must … we must hold tightly to that key. We can’t set it down or put it on the dresser or tuck it away in a back drawer. We must hang it around our necks, because kindness can be so easily lost.

In its place we are left with bitterness. Disappointment. Cynicism.

Demolition.

This week several members of my family – sisters, nieces and daughters – left flowers in random locations in four different states. We placed bouquets on benches, on library shelves, in places to be found.

We wanted to surround this difficult day – the one-year anniversary of our mama entering eternity – with beauty and kindness. With the power of flowers.

We wanted to take back a day that could be remembered as an ugly-destructive-cancer-poking-prodding-painful-robbing demolition day and replace this day with beauty and kindness.

We wanted to honor, Lois Hankins, a woman who was so incredibly beautiful, but who was also so incredibly kind.

Today, whether you found vases of flowers or not, I hope when faced with your own choices – you choose kindness and open the door for someone to see the face of God.

Because you see, although that old car, Flower Power, was created for demolition and destruction, the vehicle lived out its days in a different way – it became our clubhouse, our fort. Not a run-of-the-mill tree house, but a genuine old car, (a 1954 ford Custom Line 4 door sedan, according to my brother who knows these things) with beautiful flowers all over its framework.  Flower Power traveled the miles of our imaginations as we hauled our Barbies, stuffed animals and neighborhood friends on trips to far off places where we fought off pirates, bad guys and other ruffians.

Under the shade of a giant elm tree, Flower Power lived out a different destiny.

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