The cursor blinked on the screen of Kim’s laptop, a steady rhythmic pulse in the quiet of her home office. At forty-six, Kim had spent her years pouring her heart into her children’s education, choosing the path of a homeschooling mother. Her days were filled with lesson plans and history projects instead of literature, and backyard drills with her kids instead of fast-break layups.
But today, the scent of the sunflowers in the vase on her desk—bright, bold, and smelling of sun-warmed earth—had triggered a memory.
She leaned back, her fingers resting idly on the keys, and looked toward the window. In the reflection of the glass, she didn’t see the woman who had just finished grading a stack of algebra worksheets. She saw “Number 14.”
She remembered the squeak of sneakers on a polished gym floor and the heavy, rhythmic thrum of a basketball against her palm. In her youth, the court was the only place where the world felt silent, where the only thing that mattered was the arc of the ball and the snap of the net. She had dreamed of stadiums.
Then, she looked down at her hands. They were the hands of a writer—or they were meant to be. She remembered the secret notebooks filled with ink-stained dreams, the stories of heroines who traveled to the edges of the world. She had promised her seventeen-year-old self that she would give those stories a voice.
Life hadn’t been a series of failures; it had just been a series of beautiful priorities. It was messy but it was also magic. There were children to guide, phonics to master, and a household that thrived on her dedication. The basketball had been tucked into a garage bin; the notebooks had been buried in a trunk.
Kim looked back at the sunflowers. They were flowers that followed the light, no matter how much the sun moved.
She turned back to the laptop. Her kids were older now, working independently on their own assignments, the two little ones were playing nicely with their imaginations in full bloom, leaving her with this rare, quiet pocket of time. She wasn’t seventeen anymore, and her knees wouldn’t handle a full-court press, but her mind was fuller than it had ever been. She had spent years teaching her children to chase their passions; it was time she listened to her own advice.
Her fingers began to move. She didn’t write a lesson plan. She wrote about a girl in a jersey with the number 14, standing in a field of sunflowers, realizing that dreams don’t expire—they just wait for you to grow into them.
The cursor stopped blinking and began to fly. Kim wasn’t looking back anymore; she was finally moving forward… TO BE CONTINUED.
🌻 Last year, I started writing a book I didn’t have the heart yet to finish (or the proper understanding) and probably will never publish (wisdom). Forty-five wasn’t “fine” – And that’s okay. Maybe that means Forty-six won’t “suck” or “sith” and I won’t have to embrace my dark side. Time will tell my story – I’ve already begun writing a new chapter, hopefully with a happier ending. God’s not done writing my story. And he’s not done writing yours yet either. Keep hope friends. Sunflowers follow the light by day, and turn toward each other in the darkness of night. 🌻 We may not get to choose our garden or even know when we will bloom but we can still choose to #GrowInGrace.
Thank you for the many birthday wishes. They were like flowers from Heaven!
