Flowers Along the Way
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
There is a road here in Pohnpei, Micronesia, that goes all the way around another little island attached to the main island of Pohnpei. The little island is called Sokehs. We have several friends that live on Sokehs all the way down a gravel, pot-hole ridden road. They have smoothed that road over countless times, but to no avail, with 400 inches of rain per year, the big trucks going back and forth from the basalt quarry, the tide coming up on to the road during the winter months, and the salt water air, that poor little road that goes around Sokehs just will not stay smooth. I remember one day as we were driving down that road, bumping along, holding onto whatever handles there are to hold onto in a pickup truck, splashing through the mud and hearing the gravel crunch under the tires, I noticed these large yellow flowers in the road. They are these big yellow flowers that grow on trees. I'm not a botanist by any means, so all I can tell you is that these big yellow flowers grow on trees and they fall all over the road. After they are dead they turn deep orange. They are gorgeous, even laying there in the mud. I'm sure I had seen these flowers many times before, but this one day it hit me, what a contrast, little specks of beauty with dirt, potholes and tire tracks all around. But I wonder if I would have even noticed these flowers had they been in the midst of a garden, or a meadow. It's like God knew that they could be best viewed somewhere dirty or that maybe He knew that this twenty something homesick missionary wife Tennessee girl would need to see something beautiful going down that dirt road that day. I think that I have been on long dirty, bumpy roads many times, but looking back, there were always flowers. Sometimes you have to look down to see them or maybe up if they are in the trees, but they are there if you look hard enough. I now have my most special little flower after living on this beautiful dirty island for almost 9 years, my little girl named after a flower. I would like to think that whatever circumstances the Lord allows me to be in at any point in my life, even well into old age, that I'll be able to see the flowers in the mud, and hopefully, along the way, my daughter will see them too.
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