During this, our great test, I don’t want you to waste any more time explaining yourself to idiots.
You aren’t an equation that requires any exposition, nor are you a riddle that needs solving.
You are an audacious wildflower.
So, please act accordingly.
Wildflowers never offer clarification about their purpose. They just grow wherever the hell that they want. Wildflowers wrap themselves around the vines and branches of the ordinary to provide us all a masterclass in the power of contrast.
Wildflowers are the splash of blush and rose in a monochrome portrait.
Wildflowers are a thick Saturday night kiss on a thinning Thursday afternoon.
Wildflowers are everything that you wanted to be when you were 20 years old.
Remember how you always wanted to be
the unapologetic bringer os Spring?
Now’s your chance – today is the day!
Remember how you wanted to be
a body with soft petals
and roots planted so deep that you can feel
the planet shake, spin and moan
right beneath your heaven-kissed
painted tulip toes?
Now’s your chance – today is the day!
Remember?
how you wanted to be
the blossom of bluebell kindness
-and the filament of prairie star adventure?
Now’s your chance – today is the day!
I know your nature and how
you have always longed to be
seduced by the light.
How you have trembled
-to soak yourself
under a sun that
You believed that
was burning just for you.
Do you remember how you used
to wonder if the sun would be able
to exist without you?
Remember how you
used to consider
that without you,
the patron simmering saint
of the arousing spring,
that the sun would have no purpose.
That is the audacity of the wildflower.
You have always wanted to be the living
proof that the color of hope is Easter pink.
You wanted to be the one who made people
step off of the path and to follow your
fragrance until they found you sunbathing
in the woods.
The thing about
wildflowers is that
they love to be found.
Wildflowers
love it when somebody lies
down next to them so they can
have an audience for when they
preach their sermon of budding hope.
Wildflowers
are theologians of creation,
urging us to believe in a God that forms
the most delicate and beautiful things
out of bare nothingness.
Have I said too much? I hope so.
Come back to your bloom, my love. You weren’t the wildflower – YOU STILL ARE the wildflower.
Take off your houseplant apron and slip back into your flame flower sundress and terraform this paved world into a sprawling garden of your own making.
There is no past tense to your sunflower birthright.
This is who you are. You are the sweet angel of sun-drenched meadows, and we have come to listen to your gospel hymns.
You were born to explore the great mystery of the heavens with the stretching arm of your stem.
You were born to reflect the light of the sun that worships at your fragrant altar.
You were born to be woven into a crown of celestial kitten tails.
Can you feel yourself pushing up through the weeds that you have let yourself be buried in?
Can you hear the dried shrubs whisper about you yet as you claw you way out of the soil?
Their growling jealousy will be the soundtrack playing in the background that reminds you what you have always been:
A beautifully dangerous wildflower,
during this, our great test,
I can’t wait to watch
you rise up out of the
cracked earth and anoint
every single acre of this
world in your purple lipstick
of unashamed audacity.
Thank you so much to my friend John Roedel for your gift to this world!
John Roedel is a comic, husband and father of three boys based in Wyoming. He began talking with “God” in 2015 on Facebook about his ongoing faith crisis. What began as a flippant way of making light of his doubts in the Divine turned into something he wasn’t at all prepared for: God wrote back.
Since creating the popular Hey God. Hey John. blog on Facebook three years ago, John has tackled such topics as his journey to mental health wellness, his lack of faith, the joy and pain of raising a child with autism, and grief, all in the form of a simple conversation with “God.”
Over the last couple years John has published two poetry books: “Any Given Someday: The Poetry of What Comes Next.” And “Untied.”
You can follow John of Facebook and Instagram and his website heygodheyjohn.com
Audacious Wildflower,
