Blithe Spirits

My house is full of figural imagery, often women or girls with expressions of joy or peaceful grace, which I then seem to surround with flowers.  Interesting juxtapositions, but also classic ones:  people instinctively connect joy with blooming things--fragrance, beauty, fullness, openness: blithe spirits complete in their own lovely selves.

Flowers and people need to be nurtured though, or they fade and die.  True, the statues are like the figures on Keats' Grecian Urn that are timeless, forever smiling, forever young, and my china or silk flowers never fade, but they never grow, either.

I am struggling to embrace the growth that has been thrust upon me through circumstances not of my choosing, and know that I must grow or die.  I struggle with the dreams inside me that have already died, struggle to create and nurture new dreams.  I struggle to cut off the "suckers" that seem to grow everywhere in my life, weakening it and making me less fruitful, less blooming than I might be.  Of course, it might help if I remembered to let God do the pruning, as he's promised to do, instead of trying to do it myself, but I also think, if I get honest with myself,  that I often pull back from his celestial clippers!  Ouch!

I need some water, Lord!  I need some plant food! Let me be one of your blithe spirits: plant me right by your waters so my roots reach you always to be fed exactly as I need.  Put a smile back on my face and let me radiate, bloom with your joy so that others may see it.