Weeds have pretty flowers too

“As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

Woven within the book of Genesis are stories of how awful things happened to God’s people, terrible things. And yet, we see how God turns the bad into something good and beautiful.

In the context of the verse above, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers, enduring some pretty significant hardships and trauma. Because of where this took him, however, he eventually became second-in-command to Pharaoh and was able to provide food to his family during a famine. His suffering positioned him to save many lives, including his own family, showing how God can redeem even the darkest circumstances for a greater purpose.

There’s so much more here, but one point to this story, and so many others throughout Scripture is that the hard parts of our stories can become so beautiful when we entrust the outcome to God.

God uses everything, he wastes nothing.

I once went on walks with one of my clients around her neighborhood. Oh, the joys of in-home therapy!

One of the things my client would do was point out and cherish flower weeds — those plants growing on the side of the road that the average civilian (myself included) would fail to appreciate or even notice because after all, it’s a weed.

But to her, it wasn’t just a weed.

It was a lovely, bright flower, so resilient and persistent down to its roots. This weed was unique, it grew in some of the harshest conditions like the sandy soil by a traffic light scorched by the sun. She spotted yellow, purple, and white flower-weeds everywhere we walked and treasured each one.

I learned an important lesson that day: Weeds have pretty flowers too.

Guess what? Doing therapy is just as valuable for the therapist… 🙂

As I’ve been digging into my own story more, I’m learning to embrace, rather than wish it was different, those parts that were so hard. I’m learning to see the strength and resilience that came out of the darkness, the ruptures, the pain, and how those impeccable coping skills I developed along the way can be channeled for good.

I’ve chosen to stop living in the past. To stop letting the past be my present. But boy, I’m going to bring what I learned in the past here in my present. I’m going to let the hard fuel as much good as the Lord will bring forth from me.

This is redemption.

This is me cherishing my weed-flowers.

Are there weeds to pull up? YES. Let me tell you, I’ve dug up a lot of thought-weeds. And there are more to pull up.

Yet, if we judge all the weeds — those hard parts of our story — and go on wishing they were not there, wishing for a marigold instead, we may miss beauty that’s there. The weeds become much more bearable and even appreciated when we stop exhausting ourselves trying to pull them all up and allow them to just be, unique and influential to the landscape of our inner garden, the unfolding story of our life.

What might it look like to cherish your flower-weed?