Weeds

 

Last week I was weeding around the house. For some reason, the dandelions are especially plentiful this year. I hate using any kind of weed killers because I want to help any butterflies that come along, but I must balance that with the fact that my wife does not want our yard to look like we live in a backwoods village somewhere. I'm not sure where that even is, but still, I try to avoid it. So I weed. I scrape them out of cracks. I try to pull them up by the roots. And for the most part, I keep a fairly clean lawn & garden area. Still, It got me thinking. What is a weed anyway? A quick search gave me these quotes.

• ·       A weed is but an unloved flower" - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
• ·       "Weeds are nature's graffiti" - J.L.W. Brooks
• ·       "What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
• ·       "A weed is just a plant that's determined to be where it's not wanted." – Unattributed

I recently found out that I can feed dandelions to my bearded dragon. I tried a few, and he loved them. So just like that, dandelions went from a hated yard weed to a edible flower cultivated in a pot for one of my animals. In this case, it was just a flower in the wrong location. Honestly, they are pretty, and the early spring pollinators can't get enough. Could it be that they have received a bad rap?

Have you ever felt like a weed? I have. Maybe you work with a nice group of people but you don’t feel part of the group. Maybe you think differently than everyone around you and feel kept on the outside. Don’t dismay, the inner circle isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anyway. Possibly someone has told you “you’re just not a fit”.

It’s very possible you are just the right person in the wrong place. I remember being told “it’s just not a fit” at one of my teaching positions. It’s discouraging, demoralizing, and depressing. Yet shortly after I went to another school who hired me and thought I was a real blessing.

I think in the wrong place at the wrong time, any decent flower could be a weed. In the right place, at the right time, weeds turn into a wildflower garden. Trust God to put you in the right place, and when you get there flourish. Even weeds can be beautiful.

“If you see a dandelion as a weed, you’ll spray it. If you see it as a flower, you’ll draw it close, turn it this way and that, and become lost in the colossal burst of slender golden petals that spew sunshine into the darkest of souls. And so, how many things have we sprayed that could have illuminated our souls if we would have let them be more than what we let them be?” ― Craig D. Lounsbrough