I sat in my crushed car, reeling from the shock of a five car accident that totaled my car. After the policemen took us to a nearby strip mall so I sat in the car waiting.
“Mom, look. Look at the flowers. Mom, these are some of your favorite flowers!” I turned around in the car seat and spotted my son, Alex, standing by a group of three, deep pink crepe myrtles.
I groaned. For a moment, I thought it was rather insensitive to tell me to look at the flowers instead of empathizing with my loss.
I paused for a few seconds and a second thought came. He’s right. Why not enjoy the beauty? At that point, I could do nothing about the car except grieve and the beauty of the flowers lifted my spirits.
Alex came to help me the minute he heard about the accident and I sat in the car while we waited for the policeman to fill out all the paperwork, “This is going to take a while because five cars were involved,” he warned me.
So Alex and I sat there and savored the beauty of the flowers. He wanted to take photos and got me to smile. When I flashed a smile at him, he said, “Now there is the smile of an overcomer!”
Alex is right, I am an overcomer. Daily, I’m overcoming as I grow through this adversity and look for the beauty amid the mess.
This reinforced to me that regardless of how bad things are, beauty is there if I look for it and have eyes to see.