We drove to visit the sunflowers. Not the ones cut and waiting to be nestled in a vase, but the ones rooted and unassaulted…the ones aware of no other experience than bending toward the sun.

As far as my eyes can see there are ten thousand yellow petals ravenous for the light. The earth is parched yet there is no evidence of malnutrition, only this insistence to reach toward the object of their unending infatuation.

Everywhere for at least a mile I am submerged in the back side of sunflowers and a flood of emotions, like tiny bits of pollen, that coax the water from my eyes. Amid bees buzzing and thirsty dirt between my toes I am struck that the “obvious” is nearly always what we as humans bend toward—our thoughts. our cravings. our desires.

Obvious. A word that feels so incredibly naïve, even arrogant, now. Have I been so disquieted by what others miss that I [myself] have overlooked the essential thing?

Have I shaped my own reality based upon the limited way I see the world?

Not until this moment has it ever occurred to me to place a flower backward in a vase.

What if unimaginable beauty inhabits what is unseen, undone, or even missed?

Is it possible that life is as vast and endless as sunflowers in a field? What if its richness, its meaning is only discovered in examining it from all sides?

Am I like a sunflower, the details of me only now being revealed? “Look at how she bends to the sun, even when the ground is parched, even when she is thirsty.”

To consider one another mysterious, even to ourselves. To trust that there are details yet to uncover and admit we have sometimes been too fearful to consider every angle. To believe in the potential of an “unknown” more potent than anything we’ve encountered. To stand amid our own reality—brave enough to stretch as far as possible in one direction yet, if necessary, still wise enough to turn around...

This is beauty like the sunflower.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

If you know me, read me, you understand that there is always something timely in what I write, so that the beauty of life can be seen as inextricably woven in the hard moment.

During this past season of surprising personal events, I’ve asked our Creator how he wants to use what has been “happening” with my health. It is not lost on me that during the single most important Medical Moment in the history of our generation [and many generations to come] I am battling cancer.

This past week I had my first haircut since relinquishing my long locks to chemotherapy. I marched proudly into a “Men’s Haircuts” salon and asked the stylist to make it “short and chic.”

The truth is, despite being grateful for the enormous blessing of hair growing again, I am wrestling intensely with emerging from my bald season that has drawn me closer to my Creator and in so many ways to myself.

It is not by accident that my “situation” has been exquisitely orchestrated for such a time as this. To wish this season of my life away would be hasty, even reckless, as far as I can see.

I have shared open and honestly about my own vaccination history that changed the entire trajectory of my life, leading to a broken immune system and ultimately to my battle now. [see relevant Journal Entries listed below].

What we go through is intended to illustrate in real time what is doable, imaginable, survivable, for those who are having trouble believing it for themselves.

So I have to ask, if I’m not being hasty in wishing all of what I am going through away, why are you? Are we really so eager to get on with our lives that we will allow someone else to mandate what should only be an intimate conversation between doctor and patient, overlooking long-term consequences out of fear or for short-sighted gain?

What if there is some all-encompassing lesson that can only be learned from slowing down, not rushing in? What if our Creator is asking us to give Him a little room to bring revelation.

Just. A. Little. Room.

For those of you who are wondering if I am anti-vaccination I would refer you to my six intense rounds of chemotherapy. Done right, Medicine is life-saving and miraculous.

I could write volumes about how this season has changed me—how it’s slowed me down, stilled my heart, allowed me for the first time in my life to catch my breath.

In this context, there are two words that I am compelled to say—

JUST WAIT.

Life-altering decisions should never be made without examining the issue from every side…

Which brings me to the sunflowers.