Do you think the weeds on the side of the road ever stop mid-bloom and think “Man I wish I was a rose…I could make such a difference in the world if I had just been born a rose.”  Personally, I just don’t think that happens.

A weed is just an unloved flower.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I think these misunderstood beauties believe in themselves…they know the Creator painted them with just as much artistic beauty and love as He did the most prized rose in a rosarian’s collection.

Just watch the eyes of a child as he picks a bouquet of dandelions for his mother, all he sees is the beauty of the bloom.  These beautiful misunderstood flowers don’t compare themselves to the other “fancier” blooms.

What is a weed?  A plant whose virtues 

have not yet been discovered.

Ralph Waldo Emmerson

They don’t let society put a label on them.  They see their true worth and beauty all on their own, they need no one else to validate them.  They are content in their place on the side of the road, or in a field where cattle graze, or in a vacant lot…their ability to bloom is not contingent on their circumstance.  They thrive right where they are with infectious joy and abandon.

And in doing so, they bring so much beauty to places that generally don’t see a lot of beauty.  In sidewalk cracks and crevices, beside dumpsters, next to broken glass and down dark alleys.

One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.

Susan Wittig Albert

I want to be more like that kind of flower.  I want to bloom with abandon wherever God plants me.  I don’t want to compare myself to the other flowers, the prettier fancier ones. I don’t want to wish my soil was smoother and that my surroundings were more beautiful.

I want to wake up each morning the single-minded goal of bringing glory and honor to my Creator.  To bring beauty and joy to my surroundings.  To not spend my precious few days on this earth wishing I was something more, something more significant.

The difference between a flower and a weed 

is a judgment.

I don’t want to let my self-worth be dictated by others.  I don’t want to wear the labels that others put on me; divorced, broken, useless, unwanted, sinner, unloved.  I want to be like these amazingly resilient beauties that keep their eyes towards the heavens because that is where their self-worth originates.

This is hard in a social media-saturated world.  I see the beautiful award-winning gardens that others call home.  The meticulously cultivated soil, the perfect climate controlled greenhouse, and I want that world. That world looks much more exciting, sometimes much easier than the place God has planted me.  But it’s not.  Because no matter what I think on the hardest of hard days, the soil I am planted in is absolutely hand-picked and cultivated by my Creator to bring out the best blooms that I am capable of.  I am my Father’s favorite wildflower!

In a world of roses, she chose to be a dandelion.

Sarah Beth McClure