Look to the Weeds

“When life is not coming up roses
Look to the weeds
and find the beauty hidden within them.”
― L.F.Young

 

Photo © 2017 C. Castle

 

The other day I was searching for a rose quote to go with some of my rose pictures for a garden post I was planning. My objective was to talk about the lovely scents, beauty, and joy roses can contribute to one’s garden. Instead, I found this quote about weeds. The phrase “finds the beauty hidden within them”—them being weeds—stuck with me.

 Beauty in weeds? That almost sounds like an oxymoron: two contradictory elements put together. After all, what gardener, or non-gardener even, thinks weeds are beautiful? Isn’t a smooth, manicured expanse of green grass much more pleasing than a lawn filled with lumpy and unruly weeds?

 But the author of this quote was on to something that we often forget when we’re in the midst of troubles and trials. Even weeds have a purpose, and in many cases the blooms on a weed are as beautiful as our prized flowers.

 s a gardener I must confess that I don’t like weeds very much. They muck up my nice flowerbeds. Grow in places that are hard to weed, and they are difficult to eradicate. It’s also a losing battle to keep the weeds in my garden from blooming. A single blossom can result in hundreds or thousands more weeds. But when I haven’t yanked them out I have found some beautiful surprises—both physical and spiritual.

 For example—The most common of weeds in any gardener’s yard is the lowly dandelion. Gardeners ruthlessly eradicate them, splashing poisonous herbicides across the lawn. But perhaps we should stop and reconsider our actions. This hated weed can serve a purpose. The leaves are edible as salad greens, as long as you haven’t sprayed chemicals on them. If I were starving in a forest, the dandelion is the one plant I could recognize and eat. I’d consider that a hidden beauty if I were hungry enough to forage for food in the wild.

A bunch of these cheery yellow flowers clutched in a small hand and presented to you as a gift is a bouquet that never fades from your memory. I remember all the nosegays my daughter picked for me and the pride with which she delivered her weedy gift. In her childish vision, she recognized beauty where I saw none. Something we adults need to rediscover.

When you carefully pluck the dandelion’s fragile, cottony seed head and tell your child to blow and make a wish—spreading the tiny seeds to the wind—you create an experience you both will remember all your lives. Trust me, the watching a thousand seeds float into your lawn is worth the joyful giggles you’ll hear as your child chases the drifting seeds around the yard.

This is just one example of how the lowly weed can be a blessing. I’m sure if you think about the weeds in your life, and the playful things you’ve done with weeds in the garden, you can find the hidden blessing in weeds.

As the literal weed can unwitting be a blessing, so can the figurative weed mentioned in the opening quote of this post. So the next time your life isn’t coming up roses, consider the weeds and why they grow. That weed in your garden’s life, that you hate or don’t think you can bear, may contain a lesson you need to learn, an example you need to set or see, or a blessing to discover in the midst of the turmoil. While you are looking for those hidden blessings, remember that “…for those who love God all things work together for good….” Romans 8:28 

Do you have a hidden weed blessing in your life?

Don’t forget to leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for Grafted into Deceit by Sherri Wilson Johnson! Sherri will be giving away two copies of her book. Winner will be announced in the October 30^th issue of the Weekly Windup.

About the Author:

Catherine Castle is the author of the multi-award-winning inspirational suspense romance, The Nun and the Narc, and the sweet romantic comedy, A Groom for Mama. Catherine loves writing, reading, traveling, singing, watching movies, and the theatre. In the winter she quilts and has a lot of UFOs (unfinished objects) in her sewing case. In the summer her favorite place is in her garden. She’s a passionate gardener who won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club. 

Her debut inspiration romantic suspense, The Nun and the Narc, from Soul Mate Publishing was an ACFW Genesis Finalist, a 2014 EPIC finalist, and the winner of the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award and the 2014 RONE Award. Her most recent release, A Groom for Mama, is a sweet romantic comedy from Soul Mate Publishing.  Both books are available on Amazon.

 

 

The Garden of Grace

 

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.  

Ephesians 2:8 (NIV)

 

In America, and perhaps the rest of the world, many of us are raised to believe hard work will get us where we need to go. As children, our parents told us we could do and be anything we wanted as long as we set our minds to it. We chase the American dream. We admire the person who has pulled himself up from poverty to wealth. And we champion things like, “A hand up, not a handout.” So ascribing to a philosophy that tells us there is nothing we can do to gain our salvation can be hard to grasp.

 

One of the things that helps me understand grace is my garden. Anyone who knows me will tell you I’m a gardener. I even have a plaque from the local garden club that proves I’m an award-winning gardener.

 

I’ve planted flowers, bushes, trees, and veggies in my garden. I’ve watered them, picked off the bugs, weeded the soil around them, and tended them. I’ve transplanted flowers from my mother’s garden, the gardens of friends, and purchased plants from nurseries. I’ve even planted a few seeds and watched them grow. To my mind, and the mind of others, I am a gardener.

Yet, I really have nothing to do with what makes my garden grow. My plants grow through the grace of God.  They grow because somewhere, somehow, within the DNA of each plant and seed, He has provided the essence of what each rose, daylily, hosta, maple tree, pine tree, lilac and every other plant in my garden requires to make it whole. 

 

Yes, I tend the garden.  But in each flowerbed I can find plenty of flowers, tiny trees, and weeds that spring up without one ounce of help from me. My labors keep the flowerbeds weeded, watered, debugged, and mulched, but I can’t create a plant from nothing. In fact, I am not the gardener I believe myself to be. I am merely the caretaker of the garden God has created.

So it is with salvation. I can’t save myself any more than I can create a plant from nothing. No matter how hard I work at it, I can’t keep all God’s laws. I am, and always will be, a sinner. But because God loves me, He has gifted me with what I require to become whole in His sight. He covers me with grace, through my faith. Grace sufficient enough to save me. Grace that will allow me to dwell one day with Him.

So if I have nothing to do with my garden growing, why spend all that time working in it? Why not let God’s grace take care of the weeding, watering, and planting in my garden? The answer is simple: because I love gardening. And because I love gardening, I can’t bear not working in my garden. Thankfully, the Master Gardener God gifts me, and my garden, with grace, and permits me to call myself gardener, a caretaker of what he has created.

As Christians we, like the gardener who can’t stay out of his garden, cannot help but do good works in God’s name. Not because our works save us, but because our works praise the Lord.

So, the next time you see a bower of beautiful flowers, remember God’s grace and His gift of salvation to humankind. For He is the source of all that is good in the garden and in our lives.

 

Don’t forget to leave a comment to get your name in the drawing for Under This Same Sky by Cynthia Roemer! Winner will be announced in the Weekly Windup on May 15^th

 

 

Catherine Castle has been writing all her life. Before beginning her career as a romance writer she worked part-time as a freelance writer. She has over 600 articles and photographs to her credit, under her real name, in the Christian and secular market. Besides writing, Catherine loves traveling with her husband, singing, and attending theatre. In the winter she loves to quilt and has a lot of UFOs (unfinished objects) in her sewing case. In the summer her favorite place to be is in her garden. She’s passionate about gardening and even won a “Best Hillside Garden” award from the local gardening club.

 Her debut inspiration romantic suspense, The Nun and the Narc, from Soul Mate Publishing was an ACFW Genesis Finalist, a 2014 EPIC finalist, and the winner of the 2014 Beverly Hills Book Award and the 2014 RONE Award. Her newest book, a romantic comedy with a touch of drama, entitled A Groom For Mama, is due out September 2017, from Soul Mate Publishing. You can follow her on Twitter @AuthorCCastle, Facebook or through her blog Romance for the Ages.

Reclaiming Inspiration and Joy

Columbines from Catherine Castle's garden ©

I recently started a new gardening blog thread on my website called A Writer’s Garden—Through the Garden Gates with…  The purpose of this blog series is to connect writer/gardeners with new readers, who happen to like gardening as well as reading. There are about 13 of us who have committed to write posts, and as gardening season opens I must admit that I’m excited to see what everyone brings to the blog.

 

 

I’ve been a gardener for most of my life and a lover of gardens for as long as I could say, “Pretty flowers.” I love flowers. I can spend hours perusing a seed catalogue, lost in dreams of putting most everything between the pages in my garden. I love gardens of any size. A well-designed flowerpot will make me stop and take a photograph. I even love weeding—at least I like the results of a clean, newly weeded flower bed.

 

But love isn’t a word that I have used a lot recently when referencing my garden. I still think of myself as a gardener, but, for the past couple of years, I’d rather view someone else’s neatly weeded flowerbeds than work in mine. Bad knees, side effects from meds that make me weak, fighting hornets, wasps, and getting into a chigger patch last year, have created lots of places in my garden that have gone unattended, unweeded, and unmulched.  Had it not been for the efforts of my hubby, who worked beside me last year, nothing would have been done in the garden. Quite frankly, keeping up with the chores had become a job. Most of the season, I was wishing for winter so I could stop gardening.

 

Now, for the first time in several years instead of seeing my garden as a stretch of endless chores I’m viewing it like I used to. Renewed inspiration, thanks to the gardening blog, has me anticipating yanking out those weeds, which I will have to do without my husband’s forced labor this year. I’ve got him working on something else. Instead of dreading the chores, I’m planning which section to attack next, deciding what I want to put in my vegetable bed, which perennials I’m dividing, and how I’m reworking the beds. I’m rethinking my gardening strategy, and my garden, to better fit the needs of my aging knees. I’m also looking for gardening tidbits to write about on the blog. I’ve even started my gardening log again, which had fallen by the wayside when my husband retired a few years ago.

 

 It’s funny how we humans forget so easily. We let the here and now, the tyranny of the urgent, our lazy natures, our human frailties, and every other obstacle that comes our way stop us from enjoying life to the fullest.  Instead of finding inspiration around us, sometimes all we see are problems, chores, and endless frustration.  

 

This spring as I go into gardening season, I’m going to claim Revelations 21:7 as my garden mantra —“He that overcometh shall inherit all things.” I will conquer negativity. I will reclaim the pleasure I lost in doing garden chores. I will sit on the deck after a job well done, and revel in my backyard patch of Eden. I will reclaim inspiration and joy from nature, which God has gifted us.

 

The little cares that fretted me,

I lost them yesterday,

Among the fields above the sea,

Among the winds at play, . . .

Among the hushing of the corn,

Where drowsy poppies nod,

Where ill thoughts die and good are born,

Out in the fields of God.

—Anonymous: Out in the Fields

 

What about you? Is there inspiration and joy in your life that you need to reclaim? “The desire accomplished is sweet to the soul.” (Proverbs 13:19) Don’t wait to rediscover what you’ve lost. Find a way to take it back today.

 

 

Catherine Castle is not only an award-winning author, she is an award-winning gardener. You can see her gardens and read about her book, The Nun and the Narc, at her website.

 

Don’t forget to leave a comment to get your name in this week’s drawing for James R. Callhan's book Cleansed by Fire.    Be sure to check the Weekly Windup for the winners.

Will the Real Verbena Show Out?

I love spring and the hope of flowers to come. Nothing excites me more than to have a full day before me with nowhere to go, except maybe a quick run to Starbucks for a latte.

I dress quickly, sometimes heading out the door without even running a comb through my hair. That's how eager I am to get my hands in dirt.

The early morning hours are the best time of day. It's peaceful and cool, the birds are singing, and the sun is low on the horizon.

One morning recently, I was working on a bed of pink verbena. This past winter had been especially rough and some of my plants had died. Weeds grew in their place, resembling the verbena, insinuating themselves alongside the beauty of the real thing.

At times, it was difficult to distinguish the verbena from the weed. The weed produced a flower almost identical to the bloom of the verbena.

It occurred to me, as I was putting on my glasses to make sure I pulled up the right plant, that Satan uses the same tactics with us. Whatever God does, he has a counterfeit to slip into our midst to mask his identity. It may look and feel much like the real thing that we're caught in its trap, unless we put on our spiritual glasses to inspect it closely.

The weeds growing in my verbena were actually pretty, but if I'd left them alone, they would have choked out the real plants and eventually all my beautiful flowers would have died. The same is true in our spiritual lives. If we allow worldly things to override the living God in us, we become useless to Him. Our lives will lose its joy and we'll struggle for meaning and purpose.

As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful." 

Matthew 13:22 ESV

The only way to prevent unwanted weeds in the garden of our soul is to keep our spiritual glasses on at all times so we can recognize the weeds when they creep in. Staying grounded in the study of the Word is necessary to know the difference between the real and the phony.

Has there been a time in your life when you've allowed a thing of beauty to mask itself? What were the warning signs you missed along the way? I'd love to hear your experiences in the comments.

Any gardening tips would be greatly appreciated as well.

Happy Spring!


Cindy O'Brien is a novice gardener at best, but it's great therapy. You can visit her blog, My Little Corner, at http://www.cindyobrien78.blogspot.com

God's Wildflowers

Photo by Catherine Castle

“Nevertheless, there are good things found in thee.” 2 Chronicles 19:3

We’ve been traveling a lot this summer to various locations across the United States. As we sped down the grey strip of highway on our last trip to Missouri, I couldn’t help but notice the wildflowers along the road brightening the green landscape. White Queen Anne’s lace frosted the hollows, and waving green stems dotted with tiny blue and yellow flowers covered the edge of the road. Plate-sized white blooms, resembling hibiscus, trailed over fences and climbed corn stalks, obviously weeds to the farmers and very out of place in the gigantic corn fields sporting yellow tassels. 

I couldn’t identify the weedy blue and yellow wildflowers, but I know they, along with the Queen Anne’s lace, are not things most gardeners cultivate in their gardens. In fact, we try to eradicate such things from our home landscapes. Yet, all these flowers are beautiful in drifts along the road and I love to look at them.

Like a gardener who wants an immaculately groomed flowerbed, God couldn’t tolerate the weeds of sin in his garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve disobeyed and blighted the landscape with sin, God yanked them out of his unspoiled garden and tossed them outside the fence. Even though they were no longer inside the boundaries of the garden gates, God still saw Adam’s and Eve’s, and ultimately our, potential for beauty. Through Christ’s sacrifice, He provided a way for us all to become part of his garden once again.  

As I admired the weedy, flower-filled berms and hollows along the roadway, I whispered a “Thank you,” to God for being able to see the beauty of weeds in bloom. Because, except for the grace of God, I am only a weed along the roadside, waiting for a home in a perfect garden of Eden.

Do you see the beauty of wildflowers in a landscape?