My Poppy Surprise

This spring some flowers grew in a potted plant on my back deck. At first I thought they were weeds, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull them. I observed that the leaves reminded me of cilantro and I love cilantro! I figured I’d leave them a while until I had time to figure out what it was. I noticed that flower buds appeared and eventually, the flowers opened up. As I stopped to appreciate them, I realized that they opened every morning with the sun and at the end of the day, closed just before dark. They were a vibrant yellow and the petals looked so delicate. For some reason, the act of opening and closing seemed significant to me, so I took the time to look at these flowers at different times of the day, fascinated with the way they responded to the sun.

Then this weekend, it finally hit me. These flowers were not weeds! These flowers were yellow poppies! I didn’t even know yellow poppies exist! Silly me! The girls and I planted some poppy seeds in that pot last summer, but they never grew. They stayed hidden in the soil for nearly a year. I’d long forgotten about them, but as it has warmed up, these flowers finally emerged and blossomed. Had they been red, I would have realized immediately that they were the poppies that we’d planted, but because these flowers looked different from what I expected, I didn’t recognize them for what they were. Once I was aware of this, these delightful beauties spoke to me in a significant way.

There are many things going on in my life right now that I could easily identify as weeds. I have adopted children - some who have been through trauma. This trauma has influenced the way that they behave and the way that they behave is NOT normal. Their behavior has brought a whole new level of stress into our home and my husband and I have been working hard to set aside our own frustrations to show our children unconditional love. I cannot begin to express the willpower it takes to keep your flesh in control when you have children intentionally trying to hurt you. It takes even more control to love them even when you just. aren’t. feeling it. 

I have one child in particular who has pushed things so much lately that we’ve been left wondering, “Are we going to come out of this in one piece?” We had different expectations on how things would be once we adopted him. We were told so many amazing things about him, and he is amazing. But in the safety of family and behind closed doors, he has acted out in ways that we weren’t expecting. A few have caught a glimpse into our day, but the truth is, nobody but our children have truly witnessed and endured what a really bad day looks like with this child in our home. 

So if I’m being honest, this child has felt like a weed. This child’s behaviors have led us down a road of mourning because our family is not the family we thought we’d be. We adopted. We planted seeds of hope and expectations that have remained dormant in the dirt. For a while now, it has felt hopeless. I look at where we are and it feels like wasted effort. There are days that I’ve been tempted to throw in the towel. Every now and then, hope shines its light our way and we see a little bit of growth, then regression sets us back again and it feels like weeds are choking up my beautiful garden. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s challenging to our family and our faith.

But what if the things that I’ve identified as weeds in my life are actually something intentionally planted? What if, in my ignorance and lack of patience, I have given up on a beautiful planned out garden? I want the beauty to be revealed now, but what if it takes longer than I’ve anticipated and what if what grows right in front of my eyes looks different than what I expected? Will I be wise enough to see the truth?

The very seeds that have been planted already have a name assigned to it. I just have to listen to Him so that I can see what He sees. It’s then that I realize that it’s what I’ve wanted all along, it just looks different than what I've expected. When I shared what I’ve learned through these poppies with my husband, he reminded me that the child I mentioned, the one who is testing our limits… This child’s favorite color is yellow. The tears started to well up when he reminded me of this. Another reminder, my child is not a weed. My child has been mis-identified by my lack of patience and understanding. The one God has redeemed has a name and is beautiful. I cannot give up on him. I will allow time to reveal the truth, to allow for growth and blooming. I can’t rush these things, but I can tend to my garden and I will.

I have to admit that I felt pretty foolish calling my precious poppies weeds. I was tempted to uproot them, just like the hard stuff in my life. I want it all to go away, to make my life easier. But by doing that, all I am is barren soil. That’s all I have to offer my creator. Time and patience revealed the true identity of my poppy surprise. If I’d acted in haste, I would have torn out the very flowers that my daughters and I had intentionally tried to grow. Imagine how disappointed I’d be if the realization hit me after I uprooted my poppies! 

Now, imagine if I uprooted the garden my God is trying to grow. 

I do not want to rob my Father of the beauty that He has purposefully sown into my life. 

I call them weeds, He reveals they are flowers intentionally planted to reveal its beauty in its own time.

Surely He knows how to grow beautiful things better than I. The one who created Eden knows how to grow the perfect dwelling place. He is the Master Gardener.