The Flower of My Youth

“He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.”  Psalm 126:6  ESV

“I planted mint, I planted sage, I even planted rue:

But the fairest one I planted was the flower of my youth.

Yes, the fairest one I planted was the flower of my youth.”--Lithuanian folk song

I wish you could hear the tune, lilting and carefree. I heard it first in a compilation of children's songs I played to amuse my children while I worked. Somewhere, slogging through a week's worth of laundry with four children running circles around me, having just left my twenties behind, the song brought the wisdom of a Lithuanian granny into my life.

I could see her in my mind's eye while I yanked up stubborn weeds. She ruminates while she sits outside the sun-bathed front of her ancient house, kerchiefed, shelling peas, and a small garden of herbs by the front door. She remembers when her waist was tiny and her hair brown--when her husband brought her to this very house. They had nothing--only a few farm implements, some kitchen necessities, and a few precious linens embroidered with love from her mama and aunties. He would leave every day to fight for their living and she tried to make what he earned last. And while the babies napped, though she ached with fatigue, she planted her garden. Everything she grew helped.

And then I saw her older. The babies had grown. The herbs still grew, a bower of blossoms. But she sees a plant unlike any other there too, waving its gentle limbs, full of leaves and heavy with flowers. It is invisible but everything else exists because she tenderly and sacrificially laid it in the soft earth of this place–the flower of her youth, roots stretching down for fifty years now. She devoted her best, strongest, and most beautiful days to this small, ignominious place. She smiles. Yes, this flower of her youth is the fairest one of all.

This woman of the Lithuanian folk song helped me. I am twenty years past the birth of my fourth and last child. My children are all taller than me, growing strong and brave and beautiful. I planted the flower of my youth in this little house. I spent my youth on four precious souls and on loving a husband. With the Lord's help, I've disciplined, encouraged, confronted, planted, painted, procured, thrown away, and prayed. And now we are twenty years on.

I am sitting in my garden today. The rose bush is stretching higher. The jasmine now fully covers the arch I set up so long ago. They bloomed last week. But here's the secret. It didn't really begin to bloom last week. The arch in all its glory is a work of years. Our family happiness, though imperfect as it is with all families, is really twenty years of work and faithfulness. I think of my Lithuanian granny and smile. In my garden also sways the same invisible flower. The flower of my youth. I can't plant it again. But I'm so glad I planted here.

I stop and think of young people and the choices they have. The fairest thing you can plant is the flower of your youth. Don't plant it in bars, don't spend it in search of money, and don't mar it by trying to change who you are. Accept your body. Know the Lord who made you. Spend your youth being about His good work, however that looks in your life. For me, it was marriage and children. For you, it may be something else. 

Dear friends, years count. If you're feeling tired, just remember that. Keep on in faithfulness to your calling or to your vows. "Do not despise the day of small things", because, in actuality, there are no small things.

All our decisions grow.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 

Galatians 6:7-9 ESV