Planting Sunflowers

I’ve got the urge to tell you a little bit of the story that prompted the writing of the song I spoke about a couple of days ago.

The journalist who contacted me for that reason had been on a long journey from her home in Louisiana to Arkansas. On her journey she came by some huge fields of sunflowers, with a sign alongside that simply said “We love you Clyde”.

And she found out that those sunflowers were planted, every year, by the parents of a young man who had died working on the family farm. It was their way of remembering him.

And I’m thinking this morning that we, and more specifically, I, can easily be inclined to turn the pain and disappointments of life, whether big or small, into negative pity, resentment, anger.

Which is why we need a story or a song or something that works, to regularly remind ourselves that there is a better way to deal with those sorrows and difficulties.

We can plant our own sunflowers instead.