Lilies
Matthew 6:25-34
On the morning the For Sale sign went up outside her grandmother’s old Greengrocer, Susan became a woman obsessed. She had to buy it. She had to restore it. She had no choice.
When her Grandma Bev had died seven years earlier, it left a gnawing hunger in Susan’s life. Not only had her grandmother raised her, but her grandmother’s business had been her second home.
From the time she was three years old, and her parents began busy careers that kept them working far into the evening, Susan spent most of her waking hours not at her own home, but at the humble Greengrocer. To Susan, it was the best place on earth. As a child, she played among the bins of brightly colored fruits and vegetables. The smells of her childhood were those of candy scented strawberries and peaches, of spicy pumpkins and mellow-sweet cantaloupes, of musty potatoes and tart tomatoes.
As she grew, this was the place where she did her homework after school, where she had birthday parties and play dates, where she worked when she needed a summer job.
The teenaged Susan met her future husband, Tripp Faulk, here when he worked after school stocking shelves and sweeping floors.
She learned about her faith here. Her grandmother had gathered the Greengrocer’s staff every morning and opened her day with a prayer. Things like, “Let this day belong to You,” and “Let me not close my doors on someone’s need.”
In fact, her grandmother’s benevolence was the cornerstone of her business. Her generosity won the loyalty of the entire town of Riverview, SC and when she died, the local newspaper ran a full page obituary on the op-ed page. Community Mourns Death of Benefactor.
Her mother never had much interest in the place, and Susan’s pleadings to keep it went unheard. It was sold as a warehouse and had served this purpose for seven long years. Now it was for sale again.
Susan felt called, led, pulled, commanded, say what you will. She knew what she had to do. The only problem now was telling Tripp. They had the money to buy it, but it would press their bank account to its limit. And it wasn’t as if she could tell him she felt called. How do you explain a calling to a man who physically cringes at the mention of God?
Susan strapped her youngest son, Tyler, into his safety seat in the Toyota SUV and handed him his stuffed, purple dinosaur toy. He gurgled his happy response and chewed on its stubby toes.
Tyler looked enough like Tripp that just watching him made her feel apprehensive. She tried to come up with a logical reason for buying the Greengrocer now.
She looked down at Tyler who gave her a four-tooth grin. “I can make it work,” she said. “It can pay for the boys’ college.”
Not enough. She reached further. “It will give me a purpose and I think I need that. I just feel that God is in this,” she said. Tyler cooed his agreement. “Every time I run into an obstacle, it gets fixed. Every time I wonder if we have the money, I find it. I know you can’t accept that God leads people, but maybe you can trust that I’ve done my homework?”
She shut Tyler’s door and looked over the top of the SUV. Great dark clouds were gathering in the western sky and she would have to hurry if she wanted to avoid driving in a downpour.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Greengrocer past its faded sign as the sky opened up and the rain began to pour. She didn’t see Tripp’s car yet. Just as well. She opened her umbrella and struggled out of the SUV. Her shoes and pant legs were soaked by the time she wrestled a sleeping Tyler out of the car seat while holding the umbrella over him and her car keys between her teeth. Well, there was no denying she could multitask.
As the previous owner had promised, the front door was left open for her. She pushed her way in and flipped on the light switch. No power. She folded her umbrella and held Tyler tight to her shoulder.
The walls were stacked with musty boxes. The owner told her he would have all of them removed if she decided in favor of buying.
“The place must be absolutely crawling with bugs and rodents,” she told Tyler’s sleeping ear. She could smell the feces, but she could smell something else too, a faint reminder of earlier days. There was the scent of soil, the dusty pine of the deep wooden bins, and was it her imagination, or could she smell the peaches? Just a little bit? Maybe the juice of them had penetrated the wood and it forever retained the sweetness of pine and peach.
Everywhere she looked, she saw faces, heard voices. Down this aisle, she could see Tripp at 17, too skinny in his straight leg jeans, leaning on a broom and doing his best imitation of Grandma Bev’s deep southern accent. And over there, she could picture the way he used to duck behind crates of produce like a spy and follow Susan to the storeroom to steal a kiss. (Did he honestly think Grandma Bev didn’t know?) She could hear the door chiming as customers came and went. The rain pounding on the tin roof made her think of a thousand rainy days when the Greengrocer had given her shelter. This was home.
Susan looked up expecting to see large drops of water descending from the rafters. There were none.
A voice came out the shadows. “At least the roof doesn’t leak.”
Susan jumped and caught her breath. She turned sharply toward the voice of her husband.
“You scared me!” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Sorry.” She could see his white teeth as he smiled in the dim light. “I parked around back.”
Tripp was just taller than Susan by a couple of inches. His black hair stood straight up on his head with the slightest provocation making him look perpetually boyish. Seeing him here only added to her nostalgia and she almost giggled.
“Why’d you want to meet me here?” he asked. “You sounded so serious on the phone.”
“I am serious,” she said. “I’m just afraid you won’t understand.”
He scratched the back of his neck and turned to look out the dusty side window. “You want to buy the place, don’t you?”
This was certainly not what she’d expected him to say! The wind left her sail and she stomped an impatient foot. “You have a way of stealing the punch line,” she complained.
He looked sideways at her. “You’ve wanted it since it went on the market.”
She nodded.
“It’s a mess, Susan,” he said. “You think the front part’s dirty, wait until you see the storeroom. The back lot is overgrown and the bathroom is… it’s disgusting.”
Susan shifted on her feet.
“It would take thousands of dollars just to make it descent. Unless the owner is selling it for pennies…”
She told him the price and it was Tripp’s turn to be silent.
“The building is solid, Tripp. It’s just dirty. I’ve had someone inspect it. No termite damage, no water damage. That alone is a minor miracle.”
At the word ‘miracle’ he sighed.
“For the commercial district, the price is good,” she added. “Besides, I think I can talk him down.”
“Then what?” Tripp asked. “You sink another 50 to 100 into fixing it up? You spend five to ten years struggling to make ends meet? Then maybe you end up selling it for less than it’s worth because you can’t make a go of it?”
“It’s a family business and...”
“We have a family business,” he said. “Faulk’s Sporting Goods makes good money. And it doesn’t need to be repaired. We don’t need another one.”
“My family business,” she finished.
He wiped his face with his hands. “What would we do with the boys? Do we put Cam and Ty in daycare?”
“Cam is in school most of the day now and when he’s not, I’d bring him along. Ty can be here with me too. I grew up here and I think I turned out OK.”
“Ty can’t even walk yet,” Tripp said.
Another streak of lightning illumined the air and Susan could see a curtain of dust floating between herself and Tripp. This much she knew about her husband, he saw them as equals and would never expect her to ask his permission to work. But they were also partners and financial matters had to be agreed upon.
“Tripp, I know it’s the right decision. I’ve fretted about it enough for both of us. And I’ve....” Should she even say it? “I’ve prayed about it a lot.”
He groaned. “And if God is leading you into bankruptcy?”
“What if the Greengrocer fails?” she asked. “Let’s just say it does.”
“We’d have to sell the house,” he said, “drive different cars, and basically start over.”
“But would we really be ruined?”
“Depends on what you call ruined,” he said.
“I call ruined losing everything, being unable to provide food and clothes for our children and ourselves.”
“Then no,” he admitted. “We wouldn’t be ruined. But we’d be pinched. Hard.”
Susan watched his face. “I’m willing to take that chance if you’re willing to trust me.” It was hard to see in the dim light, but she thought his features softened into a sympathetic smile.
“Bet you see your Grandma Bev here,” he said. “I can almost hear her myself.”
He did his best Grandma Bev impersonation. “There ya are, Tripp! Susan’s ‘round back.”
She laughed because he did a terrible Grandma Bev.
“She used to tell me not to fret over life,” Susan said. “She told me not to be afraid to go where the Spirit leads.”
In truth, Susan could sense her grandmother’s palpable presence. Grandma Bev was the silent company that filled this place with a sacred kindness.
She could almost see Grandma Bev bending over pots of flowers, carefully pinching off dead blooms then arranging the fresh buds.
“Day Lilies are my favorite flowers,” she said. “They remind me that we’re like lilies, clothed in such beauty. We don’t have to worry about our lives, Susan, it does no good anyway. ‘Be like the lilies of the field,’” she quoted. “It’s only when we aren’t afraid to live in the care of the Spirit that we truly live at all.”
Susan had wanted to be free like that. She’d wanted to live like her grandmother, open to each day. But it hadn’t always been that easy. She’d often felt that her grandmother was the only human being alive who truly loved her just as she was. Susan’s vulnerable younger self had watched as her grandmother grew older and older and she had battled a rising panic at the thought of losing the one person whom she knew she could count on no matter what.
She could see Grandma Bev’s softly wrinkled face looking up into hers. “God doesn’t promise that we’ll never fall down, only that we mustn’t fear it. We’re here to use up our lives for something good. Don’t get caught being too cautious to live your life.”
It was a lesson she’d taught Susan early and often and her Greengrocer had reflected that teaching. Susan knew that God would not protect her from failing, only that she was called to live beyond the fear of it. If only she could explain that to Tripp.
Tripp’s smile faded and his voice brought her back to the dim room. “Susan, if this is some weird religious thing -”
“It’s just the Greengrocer, Tripp. I think it’s meant to be.”
He seemed to be mulling it over. “You know what you’re doing?”
“I’ve done it before,” she assured him.
“Wait here,” he said.
He turned and went out the back toward the storeroom. The whole thing had gone much better than she’d thought it would. This too seemed to have God’s hand in it.
When he returned he was clutching a lumpy paper sack and he drew out some tubers, brown and caked in black dirt.
“Day Lilies,” he said. “I’d hand them to you, but Ty looks like he’s sleeping so peacefully.”
A small squeak escaped from Susan’s throat before she could control it. She adjusted Tyler on her shoulder. “Oh!” she said. “Where did you find them?”
“In my mother’s back yard,” he said. “She bought a few more from your Grandma every spring. They’ve taken over the yard. She said take as many as you want.”
“You knew all along what I was going to talk to you about.”
He set them down on a dusty box. “Yes, I did. And may they bring you all the luck you’ll need.”
Susan wanted to laugh or shout or at the very least point out the irony of the gift. Lilies! Yes, of course.
“They will,” she said.
Someday, when he had ears to hear, she would tell him what he’d just done. For now, she offered a silent prayer of thanks.
Matthew 6:25-34
On the morning the For Sale sign went up outside her grandmother’s old Greengrocer, Susan became a woman obsessed. She had to buy it. She had to restore it. She had no choice.
When her Grandma Bev had died seven years earlier, it left a gnawing hunger in Susan’s life. Not only had her grandmother raised her, but her grandmother’s business had been her second home.
From the time she was three years old, and her parents began busy careers that kept them working far into the evening, Susan spent most of her waking hours not at her own home, but at the humble Greengrocer. To Susan, it was the best place on earth. As a child, she played among the bins of brightly colored fruits and vegetables. The smells of her childhood were those of candy scented strawberries and peaches, of spicy pumpkins and mellow-sweet cantaloupes, of musty potatoes and tart tomatoes.
As she grew, this was the place where she did her homework after school, where she had birthday parties and play dates, where she worked when she needed a summer job.
The teenaged Susan met her future husband, Tripp Faulk, here when he worked after school stocking shelves and sweeping floors.
She learned about her faith here. Her grandmother had gathered the Greengrocer’s staff every morning and opened her day with a prayer. Things like, “Let this day belong to You,” and “Let me not close my doors on someone’s need.”
In fact, her grandmother’s benevolence was the cornerstone of her business. Her generosity won the loyalty of the entire town of Riverview, SC and when she died, the local newspaper ran a full page obituary on the op-ed page. Community Mourns Death of Benefactor.
Her mother never had much interest in the place, and Susan’s pleadings to keep it went unheard. It was sold as a warehouse and had served this purpose for seven long years. Now it was for sale again.
Susan felt called, led, pulled, commanded, say what you will. She knew what she had to do. The only problem now was telling Tripp. They had the money to buy it, but it would press their bank account to its limit. And it wasn’t as if she could tell him she felt called. How do you explain a calling to a man who physically cringes at the mention of God?
Susan strapped her youngest son, Tyler, into his safety seat in the Toyota SUV and handed him his stuffed, purple dinosaur toy. He gurgled his happy response and chewed on its stubby toes.
Tyler looked enough like Tripp that just watching him made her feel apprehensive. She tried to come up with a logical reason for buying the Greengrocer now.
She looked down at Tyler who gave her a four-tooth grin. “I can make it work,” she said. “It can pay for the boys’ college.”
Not enough. She reached further. “It will give me a purpose and I think I need that. I just feel that God is in this,” she said. Tyler cooed his agreement. “Every time I run into an obstacle, it gets fixed. Every time I wonder if we have the money, I find it. I know you can’t accept that God leads people, but maybe you can trust that I’ve done my homework?”
She shut Tyler’s door and looked over the top of the SUV. Great dark clouds were gathering in the western sky and she would have to hurry if she wanted to avoid driving in a downpour.
She pulled into the parking lot of the Greengrocer past its faded sign as the sky opened up and the rain began to pour. She didn’t see Tripp’s car yet. Just as well. She opened her umbrella and struggled out of the SUV. Her shoes and pant legs were soaked by the time she wrestled a sleeping Tyler out of the car seat while holding the umbrella over him and her car keys between her teeth. Well, there was no denying she could multitask.
As the previous owner had promised, the front door was left open for her. She pushed her way in and flipped on the light switch. No power. She folded her umbrella and held Tyler tight to her shoulder.
The walls were stacked with musty boxes. The owner told her he would have all of them removed if she decided in favor of buying.
“The place must be absolutely crawling with bugs and rodents,” she told Tyler’s sleeping ear. She could smell the feces, but she could smell something else too, a faint reminder of earlier days. There was the scent of soil, the dusty pine of the deep wooden bins, and was it her imagination, or could she smell the peaches? Just a little bit? Maybe the juice of them had penetrated the wood and it forever retained the sweetness of pine and peach.
Everywhere she looked, she saw faces, heard voices. Down this aisle, she could see Tripp at 17, too skinny in his straight leg jeans, leaning on a broom and doing his best imitation of Grandma Bev’s deep southern accent. And over there, she could picture the way he used to duck behind crates of produce like a spy and follow Susan to the storeroom to steal a kiss. (Did he honestly think Grandma Bev didn’t know?) She could hear the door chiming as customers came and went. The rain pounding on the tin roof made her think of a thousand rainy days when the Greengrocer had given her shelter. This was home.
Susan looked up expecting to see large drops of water descending from the rafters. There were none.
A voice came out the shadows. “At least the roof doesn’t leak.”
Susan jumped and caught her breath. She turned sharply toward the voice of her husband.
“You scared me!” she said. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Sorry.” She could see his white teeth as he smiled in the dim light. “I parked around back.”
Tripp was just taller than Susan by a couple of inches. His black hair stood straight up on his head with the slightest provocation making him look perpetually boyish. Seeing him here only added to her nostalgia and she almost giggled.
“Why’d you want to meet me here?” he asked. “You sounded so serious on the phone.”
“I am serious,” she said. “I’m just afraid you won’t understand.”
He scratched the back of his neck and turned to look out the dusty side window. “You want to buy the place, don’t you?”
This was certainly not what she’d expected him to say! The wind left her sail and she stomped an impatient foot. “You have a way of stealing the punch line,” she complained.
He looked sideways at her. “You’ve wanted it since it went on the market.”
She nodded.
“It’s a mess, Susan,” he said. “You think the front part’s dirty, wait until you see the storeroom. The back lot is overgrown and the bathroom is… it’s disgusting.”
Susan shifted on her feet.
“It would take thousands of dollars just to make it descent. Unless the owner is selling it for pennies…”
She told him the price and it was Tripp’s turn to be silent.
“The building is solid, Tripp. It’s just dirty. I’ve had someone inspect it. No termite damage, no water damage. That alone is a minor miracle.”
At the word ‘miracle’ he sighed.
“For the commercial district, the price is good,” she added. “Besides, I think I can talk him down.”
“Then what?” Tripp asked. “You sink another 50 to 100 into fixing it up? You spend five to ten years struggling to make ends meet? Then maybe you end up selling it for less than it’s worth because you can’t make a go of it?”
“It’s a family business and...”
“We have a family business,” he said. “Faulk’s Sporting Goods makes good money. And it doesn’t need to be repaired. We don’t need another one.”
“My family business,” she finished.
He wiped his face with his hands. “What would we do with the boys? Do we put Cam and Ty in daycare?”
“Cam is in school most of the day now and when he’s not, I’d bring him along. Ty can be here with me too. I grew up here and I think I turned out OK.”
“Ty can’t even walk yet,” Tripp said.
Another streak of lightning illumined the air and Susan could see a curtain of dust floating between herself and Tripp. This much she knew about her husband, he saw them as equals and would never expect her to ask his permission to work. But they were also partners and financial matters had to be agreed upon.
“Tripp, I know it’s the right decision. I’ve fretted about it enough for both of us. And I’ve....” Should she even say it? “I’ve prayed about it a lot.”
He groaned. “And if God is leading you into bankruptcy?”
“What if the Greengrocer fails?” she asked. “Let’s just say it does.”
“We’d have to sell the house,” he said, “drive different cars, and basically start over.”
“But would we really be ruined?”
“Depends on what you call ruined,” he said.
“I call ruined losing everything, being unable to provide food and clothes for our children and ourselves.”
“Then no,” he admitted. “We wouldn’t be ruined. But we’d be pinched. Hard.”
Susan watched his face. “I’m willing to take that chance if you’re willing to trust me.” It was hard to see in the dim light, but she thought his features softened into a sympathetic smile.
“Bet you see your Grandma Bev here,” he said. “I can almost hear her myself.”
He did his best Grandma Bev impersonation. “There ya are, Tripp! Susan’s ‘round back.”
She laughed because he did a terrible Grandma Bev.
“She used to tell me not to fret over life,” Susan said. “She told me not to be afraid to go where the Spirit leads.”
In truth, Susan could sense her grandmother’s palpable presence. Grandma Bev was the silent company that filled this place with a sacred kindness.
She could almost see Grandma Bev bending over pots of flowers, carefully pinching off dead blooms then arranging the fresh buds.
“Day Lilies are my favorite flowers,” she said. “They remind me that we’re like lilies, clothed in such beauty. We don’t have to worry about our lives, Susan, it does no good anyway. ‘Be like the lilies of the field,’” she quoted. “It’s only when we aren’t afraid to live in the care of the Spirit that we truly live at all.”
Susan had wanted to be free like that. She’d wanted to live like her grandmother, open to each day. But it hadn’t always been that easy. She’d often felt that her grandmother was the only human being alive who truly loved her just as she was. Susan’s vulnerable younger self had watched as her grandmother grew older and older and she had battled a rising panic at the thought of losing the one person whom she knew she could count on no matter what.
She could see Grandma Bev’s softly wrinkled face looking up into hers. “God doesn’t promise that we’ll never fall down, only that we mustn’t fear it. We’re here to use up our lives for something good. Don’t get caught being too cautious to live your life.”
It was a lesson she’d taught Susan early and often and her Greengrocer had reflected that teaching. Susan knew that God would not protect her from failing, only that she was called to live beyond the fear of it. If only she could explain that to Tripp.
Tripp’s smile faded and his voice brought her back to the dim room. “Susan, if this is some weird religious thing -”
“It’s just the Greengrocer, Tripp. I think it’s meant to be.”
He seemed to be mulling it over. “You know what you’re doing?”
“I’ve done it before,” she assured him.
“Wait here,” he said.
He turned and went out the back toward the storeroom. The whole thing had gone much better than she’d thought it would. This too seemed to have God’s hand in it.
When he returned he was clutching a lumpy paper sack and he drew out some tubers, brown and caked in black dirt.
“Day Lilies,” he said. “I’d hand them to you, but Ty looks like he’s sleeping so peacefully.”
A small squeak escaped from Susan’s throat before she could control it. She adjusted Tyler on her shoulder. “Oh!” she said. “Where did you find them?”
“In my mother’s back yard,” he said. “She bought a few more from your Grandma every spring. They’ve taken over the yard. She said take as many as you want.”
“You knew all along what I was going to talk to you about.”
He set them down on a dusty box. “Yes, I did. And may they bring you all the luck you’ll need.”
Susan wanted to laugh or shout or at the very least point out the irony of the gift. Lilies! Yes, of course.
“They will,” she said.
Someday, when he had ears to hear, she would tell him what he’d just done. For now, she offered a silent prayer of thanks.
If you enjoyed this first chapter, please purchase the rest and see how the story ends. (And help my son go to college!)