Season of the Dying Flowers

Driving into work this morning I realized how truly lucky I have been throughout my life. Even in the bad times when I was at my lowest I never broke. I came close many times but I never hit total bottom. I guess I could have. I'm not sure if it was my stubbornness or something else that kept me from totally giving up and existing in an empty shell. I think love from my mom and friends over the years may have helped me through. I am truly blessed and thankful that my spirit was never totally broken.

Having said that, I realized how like flowers we are as human beings. We are so very fragile in both spirit and body. As with a flower, if it is not taken care of; it will slowly die off. People are so like that. Looking into other people's faces as I walk downtown is sad sometimes. The homeless people have such a look of being beaten down and their faces are worn and ragged. Their eyes sometimes have such a lack of hope or faith that it is heart wrenching. Things have beaten against them over time and they have that weathered, broken look; that sense of erosion. At some point they made the decision to stop getting up and decided to stay down. They were broken and they gave up.

I have been to that edge. I have had times when I did not want to get up and fight again. But somehow I did. Whether that fighting spirit in me just wouldn't die or what I'm not sure. Even if I didn't lift myself totally out, I lifted myself up enough so that I saw at least a little glimmer of light. But some people have totally been beat down and have just given up trying to see the light. They are no longer who they used to be - but an empty shell that is just trying to survive.

I realized that this morning. There are so many people that just need to be loved and cared for. Their faces are weathered and their hearts are broken and they are just existing because that is all that they know. It breaks my heart to see someone that once had so much light and hope and spirit to be totally broken and just existing. Where do you start? What do you say? Can it be that easy to just start with a hug and work your way up? How do you help repair years of neglect and damage? How do you help bring someone back to life? How do you help someone that only knows and remembers the pit and doesn't even remember what hope or dreams are like? How is it possible that we as part of the human race have let people get to this point without realizing that things have gotten so bad? Are we partially to blame for letting them get to that point where there is no hope, faith, love or light left in them? How do you counter years and years of neglect? How do you bring Spring into the lives that are so consumed by Winter? How do you bring the flowers back to life so that they bloom again?