The woman that owned my house before I bought it planted tulip bulbs around my back patio. I always forget they are there, and one of my favorite reminders of Spring is when I see the green stems, leaves and not yet opened tulip buds emerge from the ground. I love to watch them as they begin to open and I am always AMAZED by the very simple yet very delicate beauty of each and every tulip that comes to life in my backyard. This morning, the tulips taught me a lesson (yes, I can be taught by a flower) that deserves to be shared. It requires me to go back and start a little bit earlier in the month of April.
I don't know the exact date, but I am going to guess it was sometime in the middle of the second week of April when I first noticed the tulips re-entering my world. I was excited to see them and thrilled to see something green in my life after what felt like a ridiculously long Wisconsin winter. No sooner than they had emerged, enter weather pattern number one - tornado. I am relatively certain that in the four years I have owned my home, I have heard the tornado sirens go off one other time (in August), but April 10, 2011, the sirens were in full force and we were in the midst of some nasty weather. It was raining, it was windy and the storm seemed to have one goal in mind.....destruction. The next morning I woke up and hesitated to look out the window, thinking the tulips were going to be a thing of the past. Not so much. They definitely looked as if they had been through a rough night, but they were still standing albeit a bit sluggishly! Sweet, they had made it!
Fast forward a week and on April 17, the fine and wonderful city known for its frozen tundra decided to stay true to its name and in a matter of hours I saw the following forms of precipitation: rain, sleet, hail and yes, the God-forbidden snow! It was dreadful. It made me think the same thing I think each and every January, "Seriously! Why do I continue to live here??!?!!?" If that weren't bad enough two days later, Mother Nature decided that Old Man Winter wasn't quite ready to call it a day and Green Bay was sacked with a 10" snowfall. I wish I were making this fact up, but it's true. So, to recap, in a matter of 48 hours my beloved tulips were rained on, pelted with hail, greased with sleet and covered in a blanket of snow! I was certain at this point that they had given up the fight and surrendered to the storms.
The snow melted, and much to my surprise the tulips were still there and they were still green. I noticed that they were laying much closer to the ground and looked virtually lifeless (as you would expect given the circumstances). Simply put, they looked wilted and defeated! Seeing them, I was disappointed that I probably wasn't going to get to see the tulips in full bloom this year, but understood that at some point something so delicate had to give against the pressure and strength of storm after storm after storm. I mean, really, can you blame them for checking out on life at that point?!!?
This morning I woke up to a bright sun and howling winds. I looked out my back window and there were the tulips standing straight up with life, with vitality and barely affected by the wind as the branches of the trees blew all around them. I stopped and wondered out loud, "Honestly, how are these dang flowers alive, much less standing tall as if completely unphased by the last month of their lives?!?!!?" And, then it hit me that despite the tornado, despite the rain/hail/sleet, despite the blanket of snow, despite the wind, despite all the storms of the life of these tulips, they stand today reaching for the sun!
It begs the question, how strong are we in the midst of storms? How many times are we willing to get knocked around by things outside of our control before we give up? What storms will we withstand in the midst of our lives and what keeps us going when we feel sluggish, wilted, defeated? You know as well as I do that there are seasons in our lives that feel as if the world is out to destroy us. We start with some fight and as one blow after another hits us we lose a little more of that fight and if you're anything like me, there are moments where it seems easier just to lay down and check out on life until the storm passes. If you haven't had that moment (or those moments), I want your life! If you, like me, have been there you know the feeling that I'm describing. Here's the lesson that legitimately blew my mind when it came to me: Through all of the storms, the tulips stand today reaching for, honoring and worshiping the sun! It's as if they knew that the sun, though maybe not readily visible to them, was always there carrying them through the storms. We, too, have a life-giving, life-sustaining, life-restoring, life-changing "sun," that will carry us through each and every storm that comes our way. We have THE Son! How spectacular that we can stand up when the storm passes, reach high, honor, and worship the Son who picks us up after we've weathered the storm!!
I have a whole new appreciation for my tulips today. I am still excited to watch them evolve from closed buds to beautiful flowers, but I see them in a different light. I continue to see them as a delicate flower with simple and understated beauty, but their tenacity and their will and their fight and their determination to weather all storms that came their way in the month of April 2011 and most of all their commitment to "the sun" through and in spite of the storms is truly what makes me appreciate the beauty of the tulips this Spring. Thank you to the tulips for demonstrating to me what it takes to live a beautiful life!
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