Sunday, Day 15: Daffodil

In springtime, my mother used to sing a song that she may have made up: “Yellow, yellow daffodils, dancing in the sun, yellow, yellow daffodils, tell us spring has sprung.”

Daffodils bloom long before any other flowers—but they are also the first to disappear. By the time the other flowers, even the early ones, start showing off, the daffodils have turned brown and begun to curl into themselves, as if they are sorry they showed up too early.

“I get so tired of the showy annuals,” an elderly woman said to me once when we were taking a walk. “I like a plant that lasts. Give me a perennial any day of the week.”

“What about the perennials like daffodils and tulips that don’t last long?” I asked her.

“Oh, those….” She sighed. “Those I can’t live without. They are sometimes the only sign that spring is coming. And at the end of the winters we have here, we need a little hope, even if it doesn’t last.” She paused. “And anyway, by the time the daffodils are gone, everything else is in bloom. They get to be the first, and it’s almost as if they set the whole thing”—at this, she gestured around us at the blooming trees, the flowers in the front garden we were passing—“in motion.”

John told his followers that he was sent to prepare the way for Jesus. Sometimes I wonder whether his decision to take a back seat was as graceful as the scriptures make it seem. I’ve seen far too many people (including myself) hold onto some part of their identity—a job, a seat on a non-profit board, even a relationship--for far longer than that identity is useful or good. I’ve seen far too many people be unwilling to give something up, even when the time is right.

This Easter season, I have begun to ask the hard question: what do I need to give up? I don’t mean the kind of giving up we do during Lent, to practice a discipline or to give ourselves time and space for spiritual work. Rather, what do I need to give up for good because it is no longer serving me?  What do I need to let go of in order to be able to focus on what I’m called to do now?


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