Sometimes one's work has less to do with flowers and more to do with mud.
But I digress.
The day before my dad's memorial service, Joella and I were at the florist shop where my nieces work. The manager was gone for a week or two, on vacation, and my niece was left to manage the shop while she was gone.
The nice thing was that my niece could allow her mom and aunt into the store by the back door!
We got to go into the walk-in cooler that housed all the fresh flowers.
We got to peruse the wall full of ribbons and even go back into a back room where they store everything from baskets to crosses, from vines to twigs, and from tablecloths to every color of fabric.
"The truck comes in every day with flowers," my niece explained. "And I just go out and pick what I want for the orders."
Oh my goodness! Every day, she gets to just go out into a truck and pick pretty flowers!
"Wouldn't it be fun to work in a florist shop!" I thought, with a little bit of envy,I suppose.
I mean, think of it! Just work with pretty flowers all day long!
You get to arrange and deliver bouquets and make people happy!
How much nicer than cleaning up behind a litter of puppies! Or home schooling a teenager who thinks World History and American Literature and such ignorant subjects are the worst things ever!
No comparison, right?
Until you hear about the flower arrangements that were on order the next morning for an eighteen-year-old girl that got hit by a train nearby the day before.
"We have eight orders for flowers in already for her funeral," my niece let us know as I ran in for a last-minute order of a single rose. My niece was not feeling well at all that day, and I heard she would have to be up until late that night, to do all the arrangements.
She would miss the fellowship with extended family at the Wilson Center which we had rented for all day.
"People come in here crying," my niece added. "They tell me about how their son died or a friend passed away. And what are you supposed to say?"
Hmm. Maybe it's not the funnest job in the world after all, the being a florist.
It's a ministry, really.
A heart-breaking ministry although with beautiful flowers.
Still, I had to take care not to be envious--and to choose contentment.
To go home and spend the day having Gabriel's little children help me move hundreds of books from a bedroom to another place in Mom's home so that there would be room for a guest bed.
I didn't get to arrange bouquets, but I got to arrange books and furniture with the help of happy little ones.
And the days after the memorial service, it was true that my men were working in mud and worse under Mom's poor old trailer
but neither were we looking into sets of weeping eyes and having to say, "I am so sorry for your loss."
God has given each of us a job to do, whether it's a florist or a garbage collector,
a remodeler or an electrical engineer.
When we can only peek into beautiful florist shops where relatives work,
let us choose contentment with the task God has given us to do
and make that task beautiful with love!
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