Memory...

I don’t like flowers. I like them well enough on a field, but I guess it’s just the different colors more than the flowers themselves. 

When I was growing up my mom had this crazy obsession with flowers and she got pots of them all over the house. I saw no use for them. I don’t know what kind they were and I don’t care. They were just plants. My mom loved them. I never understood that about her. They were green, with way too many leaves and some of them never bloomed. You can’t call a flower that doesn’t bloom a flower. But they had leaves, my sweet heaven, they had leaves! And the leaves would gather dust and she would make us clean them all the time and I for one always thought that the only reason she kept those things around was because she wanted to see me suffer as I clean every single leaf. (Did I mention they had many?)

Anyway, we had this flower that I won’t even try to name since I have no idea what it was. It never bloomed. I watched it every day like the perfect poster child for OCD that I am. For years, nothing happened. Back then though I knew what that felt like. I could relate to that pathetic flower. It simply existed. No reason. No purpose. No use. It just was. 

I didn’t have an easy childhood and my mom kept saying how one day God will change everything for us. She kept praying for it. I hated it when she wanted us to pray with her. I never believed in her God or His help. I didn’t tell her that though. And she kept praying. And I kept losing hope.

I got used to nothing changing. I got used to just existing. Just being. 

For years I woke up with the same ache in my throat each day, the same way the words would catch behind my teeth, the same disorientation when I would wake up away from my grandmother that raised me, the same limbo, the same heartache.

Things were not changing. Not for good at least. And I kept getting angrier and angrier with this God that could help but refused to. It felt like my heart was swelling inside me to the point of breaking my ribs. And one day I think it did. Because I ended up in a Church, hearing words that reached me and I went home and I sat down on the floor. I folded my legs and put the palms of my hands together. I only got out “God,” and then I started to cry. Not the ugly cry the last time my heart got smashed, or the primal wail when my grandfather died. This was different — both mightier and gentler, it just poured out of me. It was so, so big — each breath, a fresh tide of tears spilling over my lashes and down my cheeks. 

I didn’t even know how to ask for what I wanted, all I knew was that it was the first time I didn’t need Him to do anything, just have me. Make me His. I was nobody’s for a really long time. I wanted to be His. 

The earth didn’t shatter, I heard no voice nor seen anything. It just felt real. More real than even the air I was breathing.I think that was the first time I was actually breathing.

After I finished vomiting my soul on that floor I went to wash my face. When I was done I saw the stupid flower. I am sure it was there before, but it’s only then I saw it had little red buds everywhere. I didn’t need Him to split the sea or write on a wall with His very hand. It was enough I saw that. I watched that flower for years and it never did anything. Completely useless until that day. Just like me until He found me. 

Things haven't changed for a long time even after that. That's not the happy ending in this story. The happy ending is that I was lost and I was found. 

 

I still don’t like flowers.

Bat Melech בת מלך

 Cristina כריסטינה