Renewal of hope comes with February daffodils

Yellow daffodils from a friend’s garden adorn my dining room table.

Daffodils picked in February?

I protest that it is too early; a freeze could mean I won’t see them blooming in the warmer spring weather.Yet, there is another part of me that is reminded that these first flowers of spring are called the flowers of hope, and what better time to have a reminder of hope than when it is cold outside.

Hope is a knowing — not a feeling, but a knowing — that life will not always be this difficult.

However, when we are in the cold places of life and the feelings of loneliness, sadness, anger and hurt sit like a heavy weight of physical pain somewhere in our bodies, we often need someone or something outside ourselves to
remind us.

I’ve always liked the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi that reminds us there can be love in the midst of hatred, pardon when there is injury, faith when there is doubt, hope amid despair, light amid darkness and joy amid sadness.

As I look back at the darkest times of my life, those moments of sadness, despair, fear — those times of not knowing what my future held — I see there always were beacons of light, like spring flowers in the midst of winter,
that kept me putting one foot in front of the other.

William Wordsworth penned his poem "Daffodils” in 1804.

He began the poem by writing of his loneliness and in the midst of it, he says that all at once he saw golden daffodils beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

As we look up into a dark night and see the moon and the stars, or when a friend brings a vase of golden daffodils on a cold winter day, we are reminded of daylight that will follow, of warmer temperatures just ahead, of new life, new growth — and we know hope.