Becoming Virtuous

I have a goal for this year to walk or run 100 miles every month. Since my job is largely sedentary, this goal helps get me moving (I’m ashamed how easy it is to move only half a mile or less in a day). Consequently, this also means that I’ve been going on a lot of walks in my neighborhood.

One of my favorite spots to walk through is an alley that has lilac bushes lining either side. When those bushes are in full bloom, the visual and olfactory aspect of that alley is positively enchanting!

Sadly, as we are now firmly in July, the full bloom of those lilac bushes are now long past. Yet, on a recent walk I noticed that there were a few blooms that were just now unfurling their beauty.

It’s led me to spend a lot of time pondering the idiom, “late bloomers.” And it’s grown increasingly wild to me that the idiom is almost always used in a deprecating way.

Some might say it’s the influence of evolutionary thinking on society (the belief that we all hit certain stages at very specific times). It could also be that we, as humans, seem to have a natural bias towards consistency and sameness, and many often look at anomalies askance. Either way, so many parts of life have an unspoken pattern and sequence that is to be followed and completed on a fairly inflexible timeline, and anything outside of that gets labeled and viewed as a problem to be remedied.

But looking at that lilac bloom, bursting forth in all its reflected glory, it strikes me as the furthest thing from a problem to be fixed. Instead, I view it with delight and gratefulness at the prolonged beauty and joy I get to witness.

It reminds me of a graphic I saw almost ten years ago and printed off to put on my bulletin board:

As someone who feels behind in life (is so very many facets of life), this gives me much comfort.

One, because God is ultimately the Author of my story, and He is good. And two, even if the timeline of my life differs from what’s considered “normal” — He is not disappointed in me. It’s not like I can mess things up enough that I’ve ruined His plan for my life. I’m not on some kind of “Plan B” (or anything else further down the alphabet). Where He has me has a divinely ordained and good purpose.

This calls to mind the verse in Ecclesiastes, “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (Ecc. 3:11a). So I can be confident that any “late blooming” that comes in my life is a beautiful work of the Lord. And therefore, I can lay down striving and trying to make up for lost time, and simply rest in His good pleasure. And you, dear reader, can do the same. 🙂