Why Every Mom Needs A Bouquet of Wilted Flowers This Mother’s Day

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Sixteen years ago on Mother’s Day, I woke to a single red rose perched on the kitchen table.

Beside it, a note scribbled in wobbly orange-crayon declared: I Love You, Mommy.

The child who would one day call me by that name was still tucked in my womb, but my husband had insisted that thirty-two-weeks of pregnancy had qualified me to celebrate my very first Mother’s Day.  I hadn’t yet held our firstborn in my arms, but I’d survived late night heart-burn and crack-of-dawn morning sickness, weekly weight-gain and daily tears. I’d read parenting books and attended prenatal classes. I’d picked out nursery furniture and onesies.

And when those scarlet petals began to droop, I’d flattened them between the pages of a crisp new baby book as a tangible reminder of everything I’d imagined motherhood would be–bright and beautiful, winsome and wonderful.

Five years later, that baby who had been tucked beneath my heart on my very first Mother’s Day gave me flowers once again. This time, without his Daddy’s help.

By then, motherhood was no longer a fuzzy dream wrapped in rose-petal wishes, but a round-the clock reality framed in grass-stains and scraped-up knees, time-outs and toddler tantrums. To be honest, my life often felt more weary than winsome. 

The crib was now occupied by our third child and those cute little onesies were streaked with faded yellow spit-up stains and suspect blotches of brown, which was exactly the color of the flowers my firstborn delivered to my bedside as silver slivers of dawn announced the quiet arrival of the second Sunday of May.

The evening before, Lukas had picked a handful of wild daisies from the field in our back yard and had stuffed those golden blooms in a shoebox. He’d spent an hour in his bedroom wrapping his gift in a tangle of tape-wads and shiny aluminum foil.

When I’d tucked him into bed on the top bunk that night, he’d giggled with glee and forewarned me that Mother’s Day was going to be the best day ever!

The next morning, an excited five-year-old had come soaring into our bedroom dressed in his superhero underwear with his blue fuzzy blanket draped around his neck. His tousled blonde hair was sticking up like he’d flown into a lightning bolt on his way down the hall and his baby blues burned with giddy anticipation. He’d waggled that silvery box right in front of my face with a proud grin and insisted that I open it before I’d even propped myself up on a pillow.

I’d shaken the box for dramatic effect and murmured a dozen compliments about the amazing wrapping paper as I’d methodically untangled the wads of tape and foil.

Then I’d removed the lid and lifted the bundle of brittle brown blooms from their shoebox tomb.

For a moment, my son’s joy dissolved as he eyed the colorless spray. 

Confused, he stuck his nose in the box and inhaled a deep, curious breath in search of yesterday’s field-fresh scent.

I followed suit and sniffed the dead flowers as if they were nothing short of a flower shop masterpiece. Then I thanked my son for his thoughtfulness. 

My firstborn shrugged and humbly accepted my gratitude, and suddenly his face brightened. He stood up on the bed and danced around me, making the pillows jump like grasshoppers on a summer’s day.

“I knew you’d love them,” he bragged as he pointed to the dung-colored petals. “‘Cause they’re brown, just like your hair!“

While my proud son finished his victory boogie, my husband who had been lying quietly beside me sat up in bed and stared quietly at his she-still-thinks-she’s-a-blonde wife. He ran his fingers through my fake blonde highlights and placed a kiss on those deep brown roots. 

I’m sure he was wishing that he’d just bought me a bright red rose and signed the kids’ names  to a simple card with an orange crayon.

I didn’t save those wilted blooms.

But I wish I had.

I wish I’d pressed them between the blank pages of one of those baby books gathering dust on the top shelf of my closet or stashed them in the keepsake box tucked beneath my bed. Because after sixteen years of being called Mommy, after giving life to five different children and walking beside them for thousands of days, I’m learning that a handful of brown petals may capture motherhood’s beauty far better than a silky red rose.

You see, those dried out petals wrapped in an ordinary shoebox remind me of the hard but freeing truth about motherhood.

Motherhood is a get-your-hands-dirty-kind of holy-calling.

It’s a marathon of wiping bottoms and noses and floors.

And reading Green Eggs and Ham 1000 times.

And folding superhero underwear when you’d rather be unfolding a new dream.

It’s taming toddler tantrums. And teenage tantrums.

And holding puke buckets and clammy bodies wrought with fever. 

Motherhood is sleeping with one ear tuned to a baby’s cry. Or a teenager’s footsteps.

It’s cramming your whole body into the bottom bunk to ward off a little one’s nightmares and cramming prayer into all the cracks and crevices of a never-ending day.

It’s applauding pot-and-pan band concerts.  And humming lull-a-byes.

And dancing on dirty kitchen floors and singing The Wheels on the Bus over and over in the mini-van until you feel like you may need to be wheeled to the nearest asylum before the day is done.

Hallmark hasn’t come close to capturing the true colors of  motherhood. Though being a mom comes with moments of dazzling color– smoochy red i-love-you’s and royal purple hugs; sky-blue giggles and soft gold cuddles–it also comes with a whole bunch of brown.  

And maybe that’s why we wonder what’s wrong with us when this thing called motherhood feels incredibly hard and sometimes just plain old boring.

Maybe that’s why we carry around invisible knapsacks of guilt and we fear that we’ll never be enough.  

Because no Mother’s Day card will mention that there will be days when we want to run away. Or at least go back to bed and hide under the covers a little longer. No bright and dazzling Mother’s Day card will acknowledge that the day-to-day canvas of motherhood is filled with streaks of brown. 

  An artist knows that an ordinary patch of brown is made by a blend of vibrant colors. Brown is the perfect combination of red and yellow and blue all swirled together, a mixture of yellow and purple and orange merged to create the hue of mighty tree trunks and dark rich soil.

An sage artist knows that there is beauty in the brown.

And a wise mother knows the same. 

Sloppy kisses spilling from dirty faces, laugh-out-loud moments in the sticky madness, prayers of faith rising from the bottom of filthy toes all the way to Heaven’s throne–these are the sacred streaks of red and yellow, purple and orange tucked within the ordinary brown of a mama’s days. 

And when we sink our roots deep into the soil of our Heavenly Father’s heart; when we die to ourselves and let Him love those dirty feet right through our feeble hands; we find colors of joy we’ve never imagined.

So, go ahead!  

Leave that Mother’s Day bouquet sitting on your kitchen table long after the color has faded. Collect the brittle petals like they’re going out of style.

And on those days when you’re longing for life in brighter hues, shred the Hallmark card and cling to what you know is true.

Motherhood is a gift of dazzling grace wrapped in shades of brown. 

Beautiful brown, kind of like a bouquet of daisies hiding in a shoe box.

Happy Mother’s Day just a little bit early, dear friends!

 

photo credits: Can-Stock Photo and Dreamstine