Flowers (And Marriages) Aren't Forever, But God's Love Is

 

If you’re still in the early days of the loss of your spouse, in the early stages of grief, this post probably isn’t for you. And that’s because there’s truth in the statement that distance gives perspective. Sometimes you have to be a ways down the road to recovery before you can look back at situations in the past and view them differently.

I remember that in those first few months after losing my husband I felt that because I’d lost the love of my life, that I’d lost all love in my life.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, but I couldn’t see it then. In recent days God gave me a picture to help me understand.

Valentine’s weekend is recently past, and Jim always gave me a bouquet of flowers to show his love. I loved receiving them, of course, and did my best to keep them looking fresh for as long as possible. I put them in water, stirring in the little packet of preservative that came with the flowers to feed them and keep the water fresh, trimming the ends of the stems to help their ability to absorb it, and later replacing the water and re-trimming the stem ends as needed. I pulled off dead leaves, petals, and old blooms when necessary to keep the bouquet beautiful for as long as possible. I enjoyed it every day until eventually it was spent and I had to throw it away.

Never once did I think that in doing so I was throwing Jim’s love away; just an expression of the same.

When Jim and I got married, I was very aware that my husband was a gift from God, similarly an expression of His love for me. I received it gratefully, and over the years we nurtured our marriage the way I tended to a bouquet of flowers – keeping it fresh with regular infusions of the water of the Spirit and the food found in God’s Word, working together through problems and removing withered parts of our past. Most of all we enjoyed our time together… until that time was past. Over the years however, without it being my intention, I subconsciously equated “love” with “Jim”, not God. So when my husband passed, my heart felt that it had lost all the love it had known, increasing the feelings of despair and sadness.

Perhaps it was His Valentine’s gift to me this year that God, too, gave me “flowers”… a mental picture that my heart finally understood. My marriage to Jim was an expression of God’s love for me the way my annual flower bouquet was an expression of the Jim’s love for me. The marriage didn’t represent the totality of God’s love an more than a bouquet could represent Jim’s. When the flowers eventually died, I still had Jim and his love. And when Jim died and our marriage came to an end, I still had God’s.

I don’t remember much about the wedding bouquet I tossed to my bridesmaids at the end of my special day… but I can look back and see 39 gorgeous “stems” in my marriage bouquet from God – each year shaped and colored differently by the joys and sorrows it contained. Funny that those pictures never fade - they remain fresh in my memory and heart. And He continues to give me evidences of His love every day that I look up to Him with the same.

“For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

(Romans 8:38-39 NIV)