Sunflowers are quite pretty for about two weeks. Before that, they’ve spent months just growing leaves and stems. A flower lasts about two weeks if you are lucky. Then they start doing this:

It isn’t pretty. But if a sunflower didn’t bend down and spend weeks looking strange, it wouldn’t produce seed. And if it didn’t produce seed, there wouldn’t be sunflowers next year.

One single seed produces hundreds of more sunflowers. But only if I allow it to stick around after it isn’t beautiful anymore and really get to work.

Sometimes I feel like this. I’m not spectacular, I’m not doing anything worth looking at. But if I don’t keep going and keep working, I won’t produce anything. If I keep going, I will have joy that keeps going with not just one short flower, but hundreds and hundreds of moment.