Roadside Weeds

It was last summer that I realized it. 

How I was drawn to the summer weeds,

the flowers, along the roadsides. 

I truly soaked in their beauty. 

But it was more than their beauty I was moved by.

 I contemplated this new emotion. 

(“New” because I always would have said I loved

 the soft and delicate flowers of spring most.)

 

Why would these wild and gangly weeds

unexpectedly be so much more beautiful to me? 

I pondered. 

It was my second summer with Lyme Disease

and its complications. 

I was eternally tired.

 I was in pain.

 I felt was surviving.

 But only surviving.

I absorbed the wild weed’s beauty.

These are flowers whose roots go deep. 

The kind whose stems bend tenaciously and

refuse to break when you attempt to pick them.

Over the summer I observed 

as they grew in the summer heat

along the dirt roads, along the interstate,

and everywhere in-between.

 They persisted in soil that was dry and rocky. 

They survived the worst of the summer thunderstorms. 

Their beauty was not fleeting.

I considered the roadside weeds

and I considered my own life.

And I knew why I felt a connection.

Because...

 these weeds are survivors.

And while they are surviving,

they bloom. 

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you,

for my power is made perfect in weakness.’

Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,

so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses,

 in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.

 For when I am weak, then I am strong.” 

2 Corinthians 12:9,10