I was sitting at my writing desk distracted by the wind whipping the tree branches first one way, then the other, loosening the browning leaves from their precarious hold. Like the omen of an approaching hurricane, Fall has been late this year, giving us only whiffs of cool breath interspersed with the still prevailing warm gusts of Texas.
As I gazed out on this whirling scenario, I spotted a splash of lonely, soft-yellow. Completely distracted now, I had to get up and investigate!
It wasn’t the prolific golden cosmos whose stems and blooms dance crazily in these unpredictable gusts, tossing their seeds hither and yon to sprout in-season next year. It wasn’t the starburst yellows of coreopsis blooming at their peak in early fall. It wasn’t the yellow cluster of blooms atop the butterfly weed. What was it?
As I picked my way along the flagstone path, around the bend, and behind the chicken coop, my heart skipped a beat. There, amidst the drooping fronds of my day lily border, stood one strong lily stalk with a fully open creamy yellow bloom. Its out-of-the-ordinary presence seemed to challenge me as if to ask in bewilderment, “where am I and what am I doing here?”
I dropped to my knees, gently cupped its head in my hands and wept. “You silly thing,” I told her. You’re only suppsed to bloom in May and June.”
She answered, “I decided to bloom anyway!”
Every now and then, I see this “bloom anyway” phenomena in people around me and I’m inspired! Right in the very vortex of changing seasons, when the winds of life blow most unpredictably, they “bloom anyway.”
Whose singular bloom gives you pause today?
For the revelation awaits an appointed time, it speaks, and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.