Flower Girl

I believe I was six years old when the thought came to me… “I have never been a flower girl.” The idea of a flower girl was so deliciously sweet and wonderful I had to find a way to do it. I wasn’t getting any younger. I thought of everyone I knew who was of marrying age. My aunt Jana… she’s nearly thirty! The next time I saw my aunt I casually asked her about her plans for marriage. You know, her time table. No reason, just wondering. “Honey, I don’t know if I’m ever getting married.” Blast that selfish woman! Doesn’t she know she’s my only hope of being a flower girl?
The image in my mind was a beautiful young girl…me of course…in a little white dress gently skipping through a crowd of people. She reaches in her basket to reveal it is full of flower petals. She lightly tosses them to either side of her, sprinkling the aisle with a pretty array of soft petals, giving the bride a beautiful path to walk down. The flower girl is a symbol of youth and beauty, purity and freedom. She captures people with her lovely radiance and her seemingly endless basket of beauty sprinkling the room and preparing it for the woman, the beloved. Like a fairy with her fairy dust. Oh that flower girls could have little wings and flitter about the entire room!
About a year later, I got my chance. Jana said yes to her boyfriend’s proposal. It was my golden opportunity. I was given a dress that was almost identical to the bride’s. Almost entirely lace with a big bow in the back. It was perfect. Everything was going as planned. Until the wedding day. We had rehearsed, but when the doors flung open and the music began, every head turned to look at me. I put my head down, walked step by step, trying to remember the pace that we practiced. I reached in my basket and dropped a few petals to my side before taking my place on the stage. Afterwards, everyone said I did a great job and that I looked beautiful. I knew somewhere inside that I wasn’t living up to my potential. It didn’t look anything like my vision.
I still relate to that little girl. Some weddings I have attended, the flower girls play the role to a tee. Completely unaware of themselves they twirl about, caught up in the beauty that is around them and in them. They capture the hearts of the audience, but, really, that was never their intent. They are simply enjoying being beauty. Granted, this usually happens with much younger girls, maybe four or five. Unfortunate. But I can see it in some women. You know the type. She wears her hair or clothes in ways that the rest of us can’t get away with. She has a scent that might be perfume or its possible that she emits a floral scent from her pores. She is not afraid to laugh loudly in public or cry…her makeup will not run. She is the first person you think of when someone talks about beauty. I think that every woman deep down wants to be her, its just part of being female. I am not that woman, but not for the reason's you might think.
I was running this morning and I came up behind an elderly woman. She was so enchanted with the hillside to our left that she was walking with her head completely turned to the side. Coming from behind her I noticed that her legs were so marked with age spots it was almost repulsive. How could she wear such short shorts? When I passed her she smiled at me with the most charming, youthful grin and said hello so warmly, I knew she was one of them. So unaware of herself that she exuded a beauty beyond the physical.
I am so constantly aware of myself. I am one of those that can’t pass a mirror or window without looking into it. Its not vanity, its that I’m checking my nose or my blemish or that piece of hair I couldn’t get to settle that morning. Maybe it is vanity come to think of it. I was praying this morning that the Lord would guard me from the darkness of fear, doubt and shame and replace it with love, kindness and generosity. Interesting that the first three are self-consuming and the last three are self-denying. Its so counter-intuitive that pouring out would actually fill us up.
That’s the power that the woman of beauty holds…its not that she was apportioned more beauty than the rest of us. Its her inability to see herself. Jane Austin would say she is unaffected. Most women, like myself, are not this way. We are absolutely affected. Starting at an impossibly young age we take hold of the idea that to be beautiful is to be lovable. We grasp and cling to anything that will make us more beautiful not realizing that the grasping and clinging are the ugliness. We apply and cover up and pierce and wax and clip and curl and straighten and nair and suck and boost all to get that natural look.
I’m starting to feel like I’m writing something I’ve read a million other places. I don’t have a problem with trying to look beautiful. That’s not my soapbox. My problem is with myself for holding back out of fear, doubt or shame and not taking the road of beauty…the road of life…not taking a chance. I don’t want to be the flower girl I was at seven. I want to take the vision of the woman I could be and live it…not with my head down…not half heartedly dropping petals. This life is my golden opportunity. In every situation I want to ask…where is the life?...where is the beauty?... and abide there. I will never be that woman of beauty; I think I try too hard. But I can dare to love, I can offer kindness and I can show generosity and there is so much beauty in that.