Roses
in December
By
Rebekah Roberts
They say breaking
up is hard to do, but being broken up with is even worse… You begin to think
that maybe there will never be beautiful days again. That maybe your best times were behind you.
I trudged up the hill, pushing a stroller
weighing an easy sixty pounds with both boys in it and I was starting to have
that hopeless feeling, thick and harsh in my chest.
It was Christmas
time again, though I wasn’t looking forward to it. It was a “green Christmas,” which in Oklahoma
just means brown. It was too warm for
snow but too cold for grass to stay alive. Everything was dead and dark and it
wasn’t helping my mood, or the weight of the stroller.
He had broken up
with me back in July, but it was just then hitting me, what with work and
writing and anything else that I could cram into my life: anything to keep me
from thinking.
I looked up into
the clear blue sky and asked “why?” Why
did I have to be alone for Christmas, why did I have to go through this hurt
over and over? And that first question
came into my mind and heart; would there ever be beautiful things again?
Rounding the
corner, I saw an older couple putting up their Christmas decorations. They waved at my boys and said how cute they
were. I said, thank you, never sure how
to respond, since I am their nanny and how cute they may or may not be wasn’t
any of my doing.
We walked on
finding more houses with decorations; some of the houses still had roses
growing out front. Big and beautiful
blossoms flowed in the wind. The petals
looked odd in the winter; little speckles of color in all the brown, but they
looked even stranger next to the decorations.
Normally, it was
too cold to have roses in December. But
this was a special winter, and I suppose a special Christmas, that there would
still be blossoms not just alive, but thriving.
I wanted to be
happy at seeing them, to be pleased with this gift in the winter, the first of
its kind that I had ever seen. But
something in my heart cringed at the sight of my favorite flower, a sight that
not so long ago would have delighted me to the tips of my soul. What once was a joyful gift, now felt like a
placating band-aid on my heart, as if God were a guilty husband bringing roses
to cover up the hurt in my life.
We kept walking
and the farther we walked the more bushes I saw. There were new buds on some, and giant full
flowers on others. In all different
colors, reds and pinks; whites and oranges, they swayed my way, as if waving to
say hello. I simply grinded my teeth and
kept walking.
The wind picked up
and as always my boys began to laugh.
“Cold!” they said, through their giggles.
“It’s the wind,” I told them. It was nothing new for them to laugh at the
wind. They thought it was funny the way it
blew in their faces and through their hair, making it dance around their heads
like the petals on the roses.
Their laughter
touched something inside of me. They
smiled, their blue eyes twinkling. They
didn’t know the harshness of the world yet, didn’t know that the wind could be
a scary thing sometimes. They still thought it was something to laughing at. And their laughter was like a promise of
innocence, of something new and sweet and beautiful still being alive in the
world.
A thought came into
my head, looking at their perfect smiles, hearing the music of baby laughter: what
if there are still beautiful things?
What if there will always be beautiful things, even on the darkest of
days? Like the laughter of children in
the wind.
Perhaps the roses,
the laughter, the joy of a tiny moment, isn’t God’s way of placating, maybe it
is His way of giving a little beauty even on an ugly day. What if the roses where like that laughter: a
promise. A promise from God, that there
would be beautiful things again and always.
Laughing, I
reached down and caressed the soft skin of the boy’s cheeks. I kissed the top
of their heads and I thanked the Lord for my roses.
Rebekah
Roberts’ obsession with fairytales, romance, and Jesus came at an early age.
She knew as a young teen that she wanted to write books for girls that were
both fun to read and good for them.
While
working as a nanny and volunteering in her church’s youth group, Rebekah
continues her mission to write wholesome romances and uses fiction as a
platform for The Unfolding Rose Ministries; where she helps to promote true
beauty and self confidence in girls.
Rebekah
was homeschooled through high school. She continued her education at
Moore Norman Technology, where she studied creative writing. She uses her
education to instill a love of the craft in the next generation through
teaching writing classes.
Growing
up in small town Oklahoma, she loves the old south and history, which finds its
way into her writing and everyday conversation with dreams of plantation
houses, WWII dances, and Victorian trivia. She has a passion for taking an old
story and making it new.
When
she is not writing or working with youth, she loves to watch sci-fi movies with
family or enjoy a pot of tea with good friends.
