A Prayerful Poem to God: “But Shouldn’t I Be a Flower By Now?”
“You are like a bloom,” God says.
“But shouldn’t I be a flower by now?” I ask.
“You are like a bloom, Kaylee,” I heard God tell me this morning.
And of course,
with my 26th birthday looming
a month away,
I thought to myself,
“But shouldn’t I be a flower by now?”
So God,
even though I’ve been
nothing but sin
lately,
I approach Your throne
and ask . . .
“Shouldn’t I be a flower by now?”
You bring to mind Joseph.
How he
sat in that pit his brothers threw him into
sat in Potiphar’s household
sat in that prison cell
for years . . .
. . . did he wonder the same thing?
“But shouldn’t I be a flower by now?”
For from 17 years old to 30,
his life was nothing
as he imagined.
He probably imagined
working the fields
with his older brothers,
watched over by their father.
And maybe
he probably imagined
that dream
of 11 stars and
the sun and the moon
bowing to him.
But alas,
life wasn’t
what he thought
it would look like.
“But shouldn’t I be a flower by now?”
I could argue, really,
that Joseph didn’t
become that “flower”
until he was 30 . . .
until You appointed him,
through Pharaoh,
as overseer of all Egypt.
Of all the grain that
was to become
food for Egypt and beyond,
in bellies and storehouses.
I’m struggling with my timeline, God.
I don’t know if it’s Yours
or if it’s one I thrust upon myself,
but there’s this idea in my head
that by 25
I should be a whole flower.
Yet, You tell me I’m like this little bloom—
thin green stem
and delicate yellow bud.
It’s difficult, God
to be a bloom
when I see others flowering around me.
But You’ve been reminding me
about seasons.
And I guess it’s not quite my season yet . . .
. . . “but it’s coming,” I hear You say.
So I’ll just have
to trust in that
God.
That my season is coming.
That I’m a bloom at exactly
the right time You need me to be.
Because God . . .
I despise being 25.
Or I guess I despise what I thought this year would be
and all the things it actually is.
And I’m terrified of being 26.
Of feeling left, fallen behind
and without any chance of success.
You told me this year was a reset for me,
and I’ll just have to hold onto that.
I’ll just have to trust,
like Joseph in that prison cell
for two years
after Pharaoh’s officials walked free,
that You know better than I.
You know the way.
So I’ll let go the need to know why,
for You know better than I . . .
. . . even when it hurts, Father . . .
