It's Time to Start Paying Attention

My brother-in-law was helping my husband with some chores around the yard last night and while he was trimming around our shed he cut down my sunflowers. It’s not his fault, he didn’t know. He wasn’t there when I planted them, hadn’t seen me watering them or stopping by them each day watching them grow. In honesty, I had thought to myself that they sure do look like weeds right now while they are young. They’ll be beautiful once they bloom, but right now they look like weeds. I’m sure I would have trimmed them too if I hadn’t been the one who had planted them.
I heard my husband tell my brother-in-law across the yard he had cut down the flowers and I started to cry. I planted those flowers with our foster children who recently went home. Every day I watched them grow thinking about how they would be taller than the kids now. Thinking how sad it was I couldn’t take their picture by them or that they will never see what the end result of what they planted. And a small part of me hoping that maybe those things would happen someday. But now, if the flowers were cut down, there would be no chance of that. I needed to come to terms with the fact that they aren't coming back. Those flowers meant a lot more to me than just a flower and I can’t be mad at my brother-in-law because he didn’t know but it doesn’t change the fact that they are gone.

Those flowers were just like my foster kids and just like so many people in the world. We don’t notice them. We go about our lives and we pass them off as weeds, not useful or in the wrong place at the wrong time. And often times, in our unobservant state, we cut people down without even realizing it. My brother-in-law would have never known had my husband not pointed it out. And while the unfortunate part to Him is that he’ll never see their beauty, to me He’s taken something I’ve worked so hard for. We planted them from seeds, watered those flowers for months, planted them in the ground and weeded and watered again and again. It brought me so much joy to see them grow each day. In Isaiah today it reads: “The Lord called me from birth, from my mother’s womb he gave me my name. He made of me a sharp-edged sword and concealed me in the shadow of his arm.” Is 49:1

My foster kids, my youth group teenagers, the elderly residents in the nursing home I used to work at, our children, they all fit in this category. Foster parents, youth workers, parents and most of all God spends weeks, months, lifetimes nurturing the potential and beauty they see. Far too often they are cut down before they ever have the chance to bloom. The end of the Isaiah verse today says: “I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

I firmly believe that God has a beautiful plan for each of us to bloom in His time, but many of us need a lot of understanding and encouragement and nurturing to get there. As a foster parent, I see how important it is to see beyond the surface flaws to the beautiful potential that is often hidden. And I know probably far too often than I would like to know, I’ve been the one who cut someone else down out of my ignorance, misunderstanding or inattentiveness. So I’m asking you today to please join me in trying to pay more attention. I’m betting you encounter foster kids or so many others in need of understanding and nurturing almost every day but maybe don’t realize it, even within our own families. As I cried in my garden I thought of God feeling the same way about all of the work he puts into each one of us each time someone cuts them down. Let’s all please pay more attention. Together with Christ we can help them to become the “light to the nations” they were intended to be.

Note: As far as my sunflowers; when I went to look, some of them were spared :) and I told my poor brother-in-law his punishment would be public embarrassment via this blog.