This Valentine’s Day, Think of Baby’s Breath

Photo by Mary Beth Griffo Rigby

When I was a little girl, I noticed baby’s breath in the hair of the bride at a family wedding. Throughout my girlhood and adolescence, the lacy flower almost always lent its delicate beauty to bridal bouquets. I’ve always loved it. For years I’ve associated baby’s breath with brides.

So when it was included in one of the cover design options for my book, it somehow felt like an appropriate representation of what my book is about—grappling with the unfulfilled desire for marriage.

Months later, I learned that baby’s breath is the perfect symbolic image for my book, but for a deeper and more significant reason. I was reading a novel about a young florist who chose flowers based on their meaning for her clients. Near the end of the book, when the story culminated with beautifully redemptive relationships, the meaning of baby’s breath was revealed: everlasting love.

It gave me goose bumps. If there’s anything that sustained me during my years of singleness, it was the everlasting love of God. The love that knows me inside and out, more intimately than any person ever could. The love that died for my soul, that rose again to give me everlasting life.

It is also God’s everlasting love that sustains me now, and in every season of life. Seasons change. Circumstances change. We change. But the love of God never does.

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