BY: JANA GREENE

I bought three little flowering plants for the steps of our front porch several months ago. I cannot tell you the name of the flowers – I’m just winging it with the plant thing. I love that plants are a big deal again, harkening back to the ’70s, when having flora and fauna (and keeping it alive,) was popular.

“You may want to throw those out,” suggested my husband one day, who – upon seeing the three little withering plants – suggested logic. And it was logical. All three looked brown and barren. He is excellent at logic, whereas I consider it largely a nuisance.

“I don’t know,” said I. “I feel like maybe they have some life left in them.”

So I moved the little plants up onto the front porch, where they sat disintegrating for weeks before my eyes. Every day, when I walk out to the mailbox, there they are – sad little things trying to beat the odds. I typically say hello to them, and I always feel silly when I do.

“Wassup?” I ask them.

“Well, we are dying here, soooo…..” I imagine they’d say. Or, “Oy vey! This heat!”

So I got them out of the direct sun, because it’s too intense. Life itself has been ridiculously intense over the past couple of years. The summer heat makes life unfit for man, beast, and – apparently – plants. There they sit on the porch, looking like a lost cause. (Even when I water them, which happens when I remember they exist.)

Bless their hearts.

Today I went out to the mailbox and saw this poignant little sign not to give up. One lone, pink flower found its way to life again somehow. Just the one little plant, scrappy and determined.

I know it’s crazy to have your day made by a flower, but it made me a little giddy to see new life. I could use some new life. One little bud gave me hope today. It spurred what – in my evangelical days – I would call a “God wink.” God LOVES winking at us, sending little reminders that he is willing and able to make life bearable – wonderful, even.

I forget that a lot. Things seem to be getting worse by the day in this crazy world. Everything seems browner, lifeless, and bleak. It’s enough to make you believe that we are goners.

But the truth is:

We get buried, and we rise.

Our spirits get scorched, but not incinerated.

We feel dead, but God…

THIS (*gestures wildly*) is quite the season we are having, ya’ll. We all feel brown and crispy. Dry and done-for.

We feel like sad little things trying to beat the odds, because we are.

But we are also magnificently resilient beings, fully capable of blooming again.

Here’s to blossoming against the odds, friends.

Here’s to blooming where we’re planted, scrappy and determined.

I’m wishing all of my readers a Pink Flower Day.

God bless us, every one.