A FIELD OF WEEDS

Many years ago I moved in with a lady who lived next to a very big field of weeds. She was beautiful; the field of weeds was not. We were both starting over again in life and the disrepair of my lady’s aging little house reflected our material condition pretty well at the time, but not our enthusiasm and optimism. She didn’t seem to mind the weeds and I didn’t mention them either.

To me, the big brown field of weeds was unattractive especially compared to our little house as, week by week, we repaired it, painted it inside and out, restored the yard, and steadily loved it back into a warm, vibrant home. Of course, my new love made the work and everything else go very smoothly.

Every day when I came home from work I saw the field, saw exactly what I expected to see; a dull brown, dead, undifferentiated field of weeds. However, today, I love remembering how that field of weeds and, eventually, wildflowers slowly captured me, day by day……. Unaware, I got too close and began to notice all the shades of browns, grays, blacks, pinks, smoky whites, and some leftover summer greens. Oh, the subtle beauty weaved its way into and through the defensive walls I had built up against so much in life but, suddenly, without a plan, there was a new place in my mind, my heart, in me for the unexpected subtle beauty of many things.

Nothing in those years of precious memories has stayed with me and nourished me more than that field of weeds and subsequent wildflowers that burst across the field our first spring and summer. It was a wonderful epiphany that I couldn’t start to explain. I just knew I had internalized​ something great without even trying. It was a great metaphor for where my life was going and how it’s blossoming now……. You just never know when the dullest, most off-putting thing in your life may tear down miles of thick, suffocating walls around the miraculous life God has planned for you and will send you bursting across the fields of life like precious wildflowers.

Jack