There is a time for everything, and some things get opened too early, but there is hope, and God can bring release and recovery.
They had been opened too soon. They weren’t ready yet.
Her deep beauty had not been allowed to fully mature, but now it had been opened.
They had told him that this was love. Told him lies that, maybe, they had heard themselves at the same tender age. From this interruption to normal, healthy development, he would never fully move into his world the way intended. Never with the confidence about who he was and what he was about.
They both now had a poison injected into their being. Their ‘human being’ and this affected all their doing.
Interrupted and injected.
Everyone of us has had times of an interruption. Something has cut across our path and caused normal health development to cease, to take a different route, to go off track.
A lie has been injected into our thinking. ‘There is no beauty to you’ ‘You have no purpose’
A rose
As I sit here writing, I look outside and see a rosebush. It’s springtime, and it is pushing out lush new growth from the hard pruning I gave it in the winter.
I can see the beginnings of a flower. It’s a small ball the size of a marble.
It’s coming. I know it is. That small ball will swell from the inside out. It will soon be the size of a golf ball.
There is a temptation to force it open. To peel back the green calyx surrounding and covering the beauty. ‘I want that beauty and I want it now.’
But no, I wait and let it come naturally. Let it emerge in its own way.
That rose bush has been through a lot of rough weather recently. A few days ago it was pelted with hail. Then wild winds thrashed at it.
The growth continued. It may have slowed, but it continued pushing with a cell multiplication that would astound us.
One day, very soon, the yellow colours will explode out into the world. Fragrance will fill the air.
It will shout ‘Look at me’ and I will come and soak in the scent of its glory. Bees will visit, wander around its stamens, collect some nectar, pollen and be on their way.
Angels will sing, parties will explode out of nothingness. God will say it is good.
I know people like this rose. They are at various stages of revelation.
Some hold the calyx around them tight. They have built walls high and strong. They don’t want anyone seeing in.
Maybe because someone has awakened them too early.
The words ‘damaged goods’ is heard so often that I consider opening a repair shop. Perhaps this website is a bit like that. A place of renovation from the inside out.
Opened too early
Time for a little horticulture education
Many flowers have a calyx, which is a collective of sepals. One calyx has many sepals
Sepal, any of the outer parts of a flower that enclose and protect the unopened flower bud. The sepals on a flower are collectively referred to as the calyx. britannica.com
In the pictures below, you can see the green calyx being forced open by the expanding yellow of the rose.
I like this quote from
And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
For some, that bud has been opened too soon.
Now they try to pull the protective calyx up and around them.
They want no one to see into their interior world and the beauty that is within. Tell them they have a beauty and purpose and they mock you. They consider you a fool, but it’s there, and it wants to come out.
But now, this time, it needs to be handled properly. With softness and time. Lots and lots of unhurried time. A kind of time that is natural and unforced. No artificial chemicals to push the growth along. It simply to reveal itself at its own pace.
And then the waiting is over. There is an explosion of beauty and purpose.
Look at how large this rose is, and it is full, full, full of scent.
Proclaiming release and recovery
I’ve met many damaged roses.
I weep, mourn and grieve for how their lives have never quite fully revealed the God beauty in them. They have never quite felt the confidence to fully move into their world.
Instead, they have held the calyx around themselves, and that is where the tension is.
Holding it in, hiding it. It’s done so much that it becomes simply who you are. It’s unconscious to your awareness. You don’t even know you’re doing it.
But depression and anxiety are telltale signs of your interior hide and seek game.
Jesus sneaks in under your calyx and declares these words.
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’ Luke 4:18-19
Its cellular, small, tiny, and seemingly insignificant, but change begins to happen from the inside out.
Good news, release to captivity, recovery of how you see yourself and your world. The oppression lifts and a new freedom is found.
Email me and let me know how about your rose.
Quotes to consider
- We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
- Love never dies a natural death.
It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source.
It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.
It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. - Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
- Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
- The calling of every true artist is to envision true beauty and then creatively represent it. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. It is objective. It exists in the character and relationships of God. I’m called, and so are you, to get a feel for what that beauty looks like as we hear resurrection and story truth and then follow God’s signposts to reflect His beauty in our character and relationships. Larry Crabb
Questions to answer
- Where have you felt constricted in your life?
- Formation is a process of opening and revealing. Where have you been opened too early or have been interrupted?
- In the quote above ‘Love never dies a natural death ….’ what would be a sentence to describe the opposite of her words? ‘Love always grows …’
Formation exercise
- Find a flower and examine its calyx. What is its purpose? Why do we never marvel over the caylx? Could the calyx be considered a kind of protective boundary?
Further reading
