(Written in May 2024)

Each year, I find, it surprises me that the bulbs begin to shoot up, even before the start of winter. My parents come from the Northern Hemisphere, and so much of my understanding of ‘normal’ is therefore displaced from the world I actually live and grew up in. Bulbs are supposed to come up at the end of winter, I always believed. They are the first herald of Spring. But somehow, in our milder Antipodean winters, the dear things seem to get confused and pop up early. 

It is always a shock to notice that the seasons change so methodically- like birthdays- like my menstrual cycle- they keep happening whether we are ready for them or obliviously distracted. I am never quite ready for winter. I fear it – the winter blues- I fear who I become inside of myself in winter. Something inside of me was made for beauty and sunlight, and the cold mornings and the dark nights make it harder to ignore the wounds inside my soul. And so I find myself, like a child (or a teacher!) dreading the end of the summer holidays, kind of trying to ignore it, kind of subconsciously denying that winter is, indeed, coming. 

But, as the years go by, I find myself increasingly ministered to by the bulbs in my garden. And, as I sip my coffee from my prayer bench this morning, I find my eyes overflowing with gratitude for the little spears of green.

I was seven when Grandad passed away from cancer, and was living half a world away. My mum, I remember, was away for weeks. And she was very sad. I was distressed too about one particular question – was Grandad in heaven now? Mum told me that Grandad had not known Jesus during his lifetime. But we serve the God of second chances and ridiculous overflowing grace -the God who told the parable of the workers in the vineyard, who told the thief on the cross that they would be together in paradise. We are loved to pieces by the God of resurrection. Mum told me she had shared this with grandad in the days before he died- in the days where he was no longer able to talk. And, although he hadn’t been able to do much, he had squeezed her hand. 

I remember when Mum came back from Britain, she bought a special brooch of a golden daffodil that she wore on the lapel of her jacket for a long time. Daffodils, she told me, are a symbol of resurrection. We plant the dry dead-looking bulbs deep in the cold earth at the start of autumn, burying them as we bury our mortal bodies at death. And beneath the earth, in the places that we cannot see them, they start to come alive. Slowly, surely, in that place of deepest cold and dark, life is reborn. Until suddenly, sharp ramparts of green spear boldly through the ground, like an army of life assembling. And then the flowers come, trumpeting loudly their resurrection glory- their triumph over Winter – and the herald of Spring. 

I think that one of my first interactions with daffodils was at my grandad’s grave. I remember walking through the graveyard by the Loch where Grandad is buried and standing for a moment before his grave – that place, which my ten year old self had been afraid to approach because of my fear of the sense of desolation. And there were daffodils in bloom. They were great tall rollicking things- a triumphant blast of yellow against the dark grey headstone. And I allowed myself to become enveloped in the glorious yellow-ness of them for a moment that was like a prayer – a prayer where Jesus was talking gently to my heart in words of colour. Death, he was saying, was not the end. In the very place that we think death has won- that is the place of resurrection. 

It turns out that Mum’s brooch was not a coincidence. Daffodils are the symbol of the cancer council, and, as I walk through my own journey with cancer, this could not be more prophetic. Somewhere deep within my heart, twenty four years ago, an encounter with the yellow-ness of daffodils and I believe, also, with the God of hope, fused in me the connection: daffodils and resurrection. And so, even as I think of the sadness of my grandad’s death, the anxiety of the approaching dark and cold, the unknowns of my own journey with cancer, a part of my heart is brimming with the hope of resurrection. And as I look delightedly around me I find, in His grace, God has sent me daffodils-  even before the start of winter.