Finding the Flower in a Weed

By Andrea Laser, abp818@gmail.com

A couple of weeks ago my family took a small road trip to visit my husband’s grandmother in Nebraska for her 90th birthday. We made more stops than usual as we traveled with our 10-month-old, Wyatt and 4-year-old, Paxton. About two hours into the trip, we took our first break at a rest stop in Sterling, Colorado. As we were getting ready to go, Paxton started running toward the middle of what looked to me to be a desolate field. As usual, I rushed him, “Come on, Paxton, let’s go!” He told me he saw something and to hold on. I repeated, “We need to get going, let’s go!” Paxton kept running, until he suddenly stopped, squatted down and picked a dandelion. "Look, mom a beautiful flower!”  He proudly showed me this “flower” and proceeded to give it to me. “I picked it for you,” he said. I thanked him, took the flower and tucked it inside the heating vent in my car.

As we kept driving, I looked at the dandelion and started to think about all the “beautiful flowers” I miss in life. At the rest stop, I saw nothing but weeds and wild grass growing, but through the eyes of a child there was a beautiful flower. Later the same week, a child in my class ran up to me at the beginning of class and very excitedly said, “Miss Andrea, the playground has beautiful purple flowers growing in it!” At recess she showed me the beautiful purple “flowers,” which again, were weeds growing in the gravel. 

When a series of events happens that make me notice something, I have to stop and believe God is trying to send me a message. I reflected on my personality and realized that sometimes I wander through life looking at the weeds instead of the flowers, but maybe that isn’t how God intends my life to be. 

Does God want us to look at “life weeds” as problems or does he want us to see the weeds for beautiful flower-like qualities? I believe he wants us to find the flower, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot extinguish it.” (John 1:5).