A handful of weeds

I'm sitting here holding a handful of weeds. Who knew a bunch of dandelions would bring a smile to my face. My daughter so carefully picked them from the yard, sat and arranged them perfectly into a bunch, and then presented them to me with a big smile on her face. She bounced away with a big grin, so pleased at the gift she had given me. She doesn't know they are weeds. She doesn't have to know. Why would I steal that joy from her? Someday she'll grow up, all too soon, and learn the sad truth of the dandelion and they won't be as precious to her. For now, I think I'll just let her enjoy the innocence of a child's world so that she thinks our yard is full of beautiful flowers.

The best part of that gift from her is how much it made me reflect on my own life. How we accept those weeds is our choice. We can recognize they are there or toss them aside and try to ignore them. Or we can accept them with a smile, knowing that they won't be around forever. Weeds don't live very long in the garden. As soon as they are pulled, they start to wilt. Within days they are a limp mess, lifeless and forgotten. What flourishes is what we care for and tend to the most. The flowers. The good things. As long as we allow the Master Gardener to get rid of the weeds, the garden will grow and blossom the way it is intended to. If we resist having to be shown where our weeds are and try to ignore them, they will eventually take over the garden and make the whole thing an ugly mess.

Right now, my garden is a big ugly mess. My life has turned a different direction and the garden I once had thought was perfect, has been found to have a large patch of weeds. The Master Gardener is working His way back into my life, trying to pull weeds out a batch at a time. It's a painful process, let me tell you. To be handed a bunch of weeds and have to smile through it all and recognize that I allowed those weeds to flourish. I fed them and tried to hide them in the side of the garden while my flowers suffered in the front. When all along what I have been needing to do is accept the help of the Gardener, allowing him to take a handful out at a time and show them to me. See, we have to know what the weeds look like in order to get them out of the garden. The Master Gardener doesn't always weed for us. He relies on us to help.

Recently I purchased a book called "Plan B". It's a book about accepting God's will for your life even when it doesn't seem to fall in line with what you had expected. Thanks again to fellow blogger, Amy, for recommending this book. It's the gateway to helping me return to a life of promise and understanding God's path for me. As well as accepting God's path for me. Before I had a chance to read any today, I found myself once again in a puddle of tears. I missed my family. Don't get me wrong, my children are still here and are family to me. What I missed was the family unit that we made up when there were four of us. The teamwork of caring for children together. The ability to tackle issues together and not grow so exhausted over little things like getting the kids dressed and ready for the day. As I sat in my tears, Sadie approached me and put her arms around my neck. "I'm so sorry you're sad mommy. It will be ok," she kept saying. I hated not having it all pulled together and keeping it together for the kids' sake. But sometimes your children are going to see the real side of you. The hurting side. The side that realizes your dreams of having a picture perfect family are shattered and broken. It didn't take me long, though, to realize these are just the moments that I have to deal with as part of the life I have been given. The handful of weeds will occasionally be pulled from my garden and placed in my hands to deal with. However, over time, the more weeds you pull, the more room there is for the flowers to grow and flourish.

I'm holding out hope for the flowers to bloom. I know they will come along at some point. Some of them are already there, I just have to look for them to peek through as they lean toward the sun. My song for the day is "Praise You In This Storm" by Casting Crowns. It is toward the bottom of my playlist. It's a beautiful reminder that sometimes we still need to step into the rain and praise Him, even in the midst of the storms.