Life Begins Again

lowers grow out of dark moments.

Corita Kent

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/flowers_3.html#71C2OUqFtWiJGDlo.99Flowers grow out of dark moments.

I am going to try to pay attention to the spring. I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen.

Anne Lamott

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/flowers_2.html#O2lKvaYgJ6dfwBTq.99

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/flowers_2.html#O2lKvaYgJ6dfwBTq.99

Flowers grow out of dark moments.

-Corita Kent   

 Every spring as I plant my seeds, I hesitate. Is it too cold? Too wet? Will there be enough sun and enough warmth to coax these dead-looking pieces to life? And somehow, always, the hard seeds respond, and life begins again.

Life begins again.

I spent my 35th birthday at a painting class, swirling watercolors around thick paper and trying to make it look like a sunflower. But not just any sunflower. I wanted the sunflower to look like me- a little bent, a little weepy- but still glowing and open and alive. A broken hallelujah kind of a flower. After the class was over, I drove home in the pouring rain and thought about my own broken hallelujah kind of life. What's done is done. I cannot change a single decision or dime or day. Parts of my heart bolted and went to seed- Freeman House, the bakery, traveling, some relationships, some dreams- but as they died they left me with seeds. Seeds to plant. Seeds to prove that life begins again.

And so it has. I went to the store and bought my own small set of watercolor paints and brushes. Why? Because we live in a world created by the Second Chance God, where death begets life and endings are just beginnings and broken hallelujahs are sometimes more beautiful than the perfect ones.

Life begins again. Let this be my painting to the world.  

Hello again. -Brin