“Dandelions are just friendly little weeds who only want to be loved like flowers.”
― Heather Babcock
I like dandelions. I know that’s not the popular stance with people warring to get rid of dandelions in their yards. Good thing I don’t have any neighboring yards because I let dandelions grow where they wish. In the spring they are sunspots in the new green grass. I even wrote a devotional about dandelions you can find here on my website.
And I let Lacey, my character in The Blessed do a dandelion dance to welcome spring. It was something her mother taught her and that she carried on even during those springs when she had a hard time grabbing hold of any joy. Since The Blessed is on special e-book sale right now for a limited time, I decided to share a scene from the book about one of Lacey’s spring dances. We’ll have to wait awhile for spring around here, but dandelions are tough little flowers that will send us some cheer as soon as the weather warms. Sometimes that’s right in the midst of winter.
So here’s Lacey’s spring dance scene with the little girl she loves.
That afternoon after Preacher Palmer went out with Deacon Crutcher to visit the sick, Lacey told Rachel to go looking for a dandelion in the backyard. A smile was spread all the way across the little girl’s face when a few minutes later she came running back to the porch with a round yellow dandelion bloom clutched in her hand.
“Do we get to do the dance?” Rachel asked her.
Lacey’s heart hurt as she stared down at the child’s hopeful face and thought about how rare Rachel’s smiles had been in the last few weeks. As rare as her own. She’d agreed to wed the preacher to keep mothering Rachel and now here she was shirking her duty, pulling sadness over on her when there wasn’t a bit of need in that. Even if with the summer she’d have to attend to the preacher’s demands. Married women did as much everywhere. Cleaved to their husbands.
Lacey grinned at Rachel and sat down on the porch steps to start unlacing her shoes. Rachel giggled and kicked off hers too. They danced all across the backyard right out into the edge of the woods to a little wet weather spring the rain had made. The water was cold, just the way it was supposed to be as they stomped and laughed. Lacey didn’t even look over her shoulder to be sure no church people had come to the preacher’s house to check that his wife was attending to her proper place.
With their skirt tails soaked and mud between their toes they went back out of the woods but instead of going straight back to the house, Lacey led Rachel over to the church house and into the graveyard. They hadn’t been to visit Miss Mona’s grave since they’d buried her. It had been too hard to think about her in that cold winter ground. Too hard to think about Miss Mona being gone forever.
They both got quiet as they solemnly walked toward the new grave. Lacey’s heart started pounding almost as hard as it had the night the preacher had climbed up to the attic room. Maybe they shouldn’t have done the spring dance with Miss Mona so newly gone. The gloom was coming back to sit heavy on her shoulders when all of the sudden, Rachel jerked on Lacey’s hand and started jumping up and down.
“Look, Lacey. Look. Mama’s doing the spring dance with us.”
Lacey could scarcely believe her eyes. Bright yellow dandelions were blooming all across Miss Mona’s grave like as how somebody had planted them there. A blanket of yellow spring.
It was a sign. Miss Mona was telling her or maybe it was the good Lord who was telling her that spring comes. Even when a person tries to close it out. It comes.
Lacey has many more lessons to learn in the story before she can find her happy beginning at the end.
The Blessed is available in e-book for 99 cents or less right now. A great time to grab the story if you have an e-reader.
Book Giveaway Time
But I know some of you don’t have e-readers or prefer having a book in hand. There’s just something about 
actually turning pages instead of swiping them. So for you or for all of you whether you like to e-read or not, I’m going to give away a few books. If you’d like to enter a drawing to win one of my Shaker books, just leave a comment here on my post. I’ll keep the contest going until October 27, 2018. That means I’ll have two more posts before I pick three winner. (You have to be at least 18 years old to enter.) If you leave a comment on all three posts, then you’ll have three entries to up your chances of winning a book. Deadline for entries is midnight EST October 27, 2018.
For fun, tell me something you know about the Shakers or why you think you would or wouldn’t be a Shaker. If you don’t know, then you can enter by just saying you don’t know and want to enter the drawing.
As always, thanks for reading.