I Tell Her The Truth

I still remember the spring she pointed outside and cried out with anguish and tears in her eyes, “Mommy, look!!!!”

I peered out our dining room window expecting to see the gorgeous pink azaleas we’d been admiring for a few weeks, every breakfast and lunch we’d comment on their beauty, my 3 year old girl and I.

But that morning brought an unhappy surprise, they were no longer pink, bright, glorious flowers,

but brown, wilted, and drooping!

I knew they would die but hadn’t given it much thought.

I didn’t anticipate my daughter’s emotional reaction.

In hindsight, I should have, she has a sweet, sensitive nature.

I should have warned her, prepared her somehow.

I wished for a world where the flowers were always blooming and beautiful.

A world for my daughter where there was no loss,

No pain,

No death,

No ugliness.

But it is not to be.

Because my little girl lives on earth right now,

In a fallen world.

And so I took a deep breath

And told her the truth.

Flowers die.

This will happen every year.

And we are sad to see them go

but thankful for the time we had to enjoy them.

And, “Look!” I exclaimed happily to her as I pointed out the back window,

“While those flowers were dying in the front yard, new, different flowers were blooming in the backyard!”

That little 3 year old girl is now 8!

While she's not so little anymore, she is still sweet. 

The flowers are blooming again as they do every year at this time, and telling her the truth has only gotten harder as she's grown and the subjects of despair are deeper than dead flowers, but the same message is there and Jesus is always the answer!