It was hot, there was a little breeze, but the sweat was streaming down my back as I coerced my husband, Doug, to take pictures of me there. I was really there. I was among the sunflowers.
I was amazed actually, that I didn't feel more of a spiritual connection to the flowers. They surprised me with their dry furry stalks and the weeds that were on the ground, pricking my ankles made it difficult to walk. I wanted to feel something "special" there. I wanted to feel connected to the earth...but I felt hot, and slightly frustrated with my husband's off color comments about how I ought to "take off my clothes and run naked through the sunflowers".
That was what was on his mind, I guess. Not mine. I wanted a spiritual experience. I had looked forward to finding the sunflowers in Spain, and really "connecting" to that experience of looking up at the sun and feeling a connection to God. I was hoping for more than I got, I guess.
The flowers themselves surprised me...I always thought that they followed the sun with their faces, but really their backs were to the sun, kind of like it was warming their "back sides".
They are tall...almost as tall as I am. They truly are beautiful, too. When I think back on it, I am amazed at how they grow at all in that hot, dry climate. Their color is warm, yellow, orange and all shades of green. They are warm, like the hot Spanish sun that was beating down on us as we stood there studying them.
All in all, I know God was there...the hot sun felt overwhelming, like His love for us. His blessings to me were so obvious throughout the entire trip; family and friends in another country who love me and will always love me, the ability to speak and understand another language, the ability too, to communicate without language as Doug was so able to do, the opportunity and the resources to be able to go at all...were all gifts from God. He was there.
Just standing there, feeling the warm breezes on my face, seeing the colors of the amazing flowers, and reflecting on all of the blessings of my life and my trip. It was a spiritual experience after all. It also had a touch of reality, blessed reality.
Praise God for my moments of reality, "among the sunflowers!"
