a 50 yr. old SQUATS...for a weed.

last thursday morning i was pulling into mama and daddys driveway and as usual, stopped to pick up their mail. they have a long driveway and the mailbox sits out on the main road. and this road gets a fair amount of traffic. as i got out of the car, i noticed this little yellow flower (some would call it a weed, i would beg to differ) sitting there in the dirt, all by itself. and i felt compelled to take a picture of it.

now i know that anyone else would have probably just said, "oh look...it's a weed!" they would not have reached back inside their car to grab their cell phone so they could take a picture of said weed. but, i'm not like other people. i'm a little strange. i know this about myself, and i accept it. but when i feel these compulsions about things like this, i know that it's usually someone whispering in my ear.

no, i don't have voices in my head. not that kind of whispering. more the whisper of God...telling me that it's something He wants me to do. and i try my best to listen to God when He whispers things to me. granted, sometimes i think He whispers just a little too softly for me to understand. (this is usually my excuse when He tells me to do something that I don't WANT to do.) but, this morning God told me to take a picture of this little yellow flower. so...i DID reach back into my car and grab my cell phone. and i set it to camera mode. and then i did something i know looked pretty silly to the people in those cars that passed by me (but i didn't realize this until i got back in my car) i squatted down, so i could zoom in on it. i am 50 yrs. old. and 50 yr. old women don't squat well. and i'm quite sure that it was not a pretty sight for the people in those cars that passed at that moment. nor was it very pretty, i'm sure, for the ones that passed as i was trying to get back up from said squat. 

i proceeded to get the mail and go in to the house. and in the back of my mind i kept thinking about WHY in the world God would have had me take a picture of that little yellow flower.

the next day, friday, i pulled into the driveway again and i noticed immediately that the little yellow flower  was gone. i got out to go over to the mailbox and as i was walking back to my car, i noticed this.

that little yellow flower that was so pretty the day before, had died. overnight. and then i did something even more stupid than the day before. God whispered in my ear to take a picture of the now DEAD yellow flower. and how weird do you think i looked THEN? a 50 yr. old woman, squatted down, in front of passing cars, with people in them, to take a close up picture of a dead flower (weed.)

i admit that by then, even i, was thinking to myself, "ok, God, this is preeeeeety strange." so i definately didn't tell my family about this. they would most likely have had me committed if i told them that God wanted me to take a picture of a dead weed! and i can't say that i would have blamed them. but....i thank God that i listen to his whispers. saturday, while at lunch with the family, micajah had grabbed my cell phone and was looking through my pictures. and he came to the ones i posted above. and of course, he had to ask me, loudly, so everyone at the tables around us could think his mother was insane, "Why did you take pictures of some weeds?" and i had to say because God told me to. and of course, everyone thought i was nuts. but on my way home that day i knew EXACTLY why He had me take those pictures. in the Bible, God gave parables (life's little lessons) all the time. and he was using this flower (weed)...as a modern day parable, if you will...to teach me and hopefully, those who are reading this now...a lesson. and THIS is the lesson.

earlier this week i was on the phone with one of my very best friends in the world, pam. she was on her way to pick up her daughter, emily, from a school field trip her class had taken to the mall. just a few minutes away from the school, she heard that little click in the background which signifies a call is waiting. she noticed it was emily and said she would call me back. a few minutes later she called and said that emily had been crying. softly, so her friends wouldn't hear her. when pam asked her what was wrong, she just said, in a quavering voice, "telllll you...laaaater." and instantly, with a mom's superpower intuition, pam knew what it was. it was, what she had warned emily about earlier...before the trip to the mall.

emily just turned 11 yrs. old a couple of weeks ago. she is a VERY bright, little girl, who is mature in some ways, beyond her age. just last week, out of her whole grade...she placed in the top three for a poster she had made on world peace. and then it was chosen, by the Lions Club, as the #1 poster! two honors for the same poster. and hers wasn't about depicting guns and violence...no, hers was about God holding the world in HIS hands. about how God is the ONLY source of peace in this world. her poster STOOD OUT from all the rest.

a couple of weeks before that emily won a place on the All Stars cheerleading squad. again, because she STOOD OUT.

emily comes from a broken family...like mine. her daddy left her mother, also for one of those "greener pastures." but emily's mother is a very Godly woman. she has taught and teaches on a daily basis, about God and His love for us. and emily accepted Jesus into her heart a long time ago. when she has to go and stay with her "dad" and his "greener pasture" she stands her place when her dad tells her that the stories in the Bible are "fairy tales" or when he forces her and her brother and sister to sit in front of the tv for two hours and watch a show on evolution and how we evolved from monkeys. emily stands up TO her "dad" and stands up FOR her God. many times parents come to know Jesus because of their kids...this is the hope we all have for her "dad."

and, emily loves to read. she is what some would call a "bookworm." i have a sister, myself, paula, who when she was a little girl, would always have her nose in a book. so many of her childhood pictures show her reading. and she grew up to be really, really smart. she went to college for 7 years and became a PA (physicians assistant) and she knows more than most doctors i know. she can diagnose us even when the doctors can't quite figure things out. and her son, ryan, is the same way. he has read literally thousands of books. he is 19 yrs. old now and a sophmore in college, studying for a major in psychology. people who read alot, are smart people. and smart people STAND OUT.

emily was looking forward to the trip to the mall, because she had a little money (she was given a monetary award from the Lions Club for her poster) and all she wanted to do was go to Barnes & Noble (a bookstore) and pick up a few books. pam tried to warn her that most of the other kids would not want to spend their limited time going to a bookstore. so, when the kids got to the school to prepare for the trip they were divided up into groups and told to vote on the stores they each wanted to go in. emily,of course, put down the bookstore, but the other girls in her group wanted to go look at clothes and Claires (for jewelry, purses, hair bows, etc.) and so they decided that the bookstore would be the LAST store they would go to. time permitting.

when emily got picked up that day, still sobbing, she told her mother that the group managed to make it to the bookstore FIVE WHOLE MINUTES before they were to meet back at the bus. wow. it takes 15 minutes just to check out in there...so, needless to say, she didn't have time to buy a book, much less, even, to LOOK for a book. when everyone got back on the bus all the other kids pulled out their purchases to oooh and aaaah over. except for emily. she was the only one that didn't get to spend her money that day. the only one who felt left out. and she STOOD out. but this time, for a very different reason. this time because the other kids, (her friends) didn't care what she wanted. because they made her feel that she was less than popular because she was interested in things that they weren't. that because she wasn't into the fashion thing or the makeup and jewelry that she was somehow not as "cool" as they were. and haven't we ALL been there? on BOTH sides, at one time or another? i have. i have been the bully and i have been bullied. and neither feel particularly good.

when pam and i were 11 yrs. old, all the rage at that time was autograph books. nowadays those are used to get signatures of celebrities and "important people," but in those days, we used them for our friends. it was kind of like signing your yearbooks when you got to high school. just recently, we BOTH found our old books. and looking through them we both remembered as though it was yesterday. when we would get mad at one of our "friends" we would draw a line through where they had signed "best friend forever" and write "NON-FRIEND." a few days later, after we had made up, we would then scratch though non-friend and write BEST FRIEND, again. our loyalties at that age changed on a daily basis. and as we got older, i think that we didn't really need a book any longer, to keep us reminded that a certain friend had committed a transgression against us. we simply wrote it on our hearts.

when pam was telling me about what happened to emily it made me stop and remember how much i disliked high school. i was not a bully...i was THE bullied. i was bullied because my body had matured at a very young age. there were certain girls that didn't like that...because their "boyfriend of the week" might have looked at me or spoken to me, so they would come up behind me while i was opening the combination lock to my locker, and they would look over my shoulder and get the code and then go back later and steal a jacket or my p.e. tennis shoes, or a shirt...and brazenly wear it to school the next day. they were the intimidators. and trust me, i was  intimidated. then there were the boys...two in particular. one was a little short guy, in my own class, who every time i would walk by him, would reach out and pat my badonkadonk. i could not stand this boy. i was always looking around corners to see if he was anywhere near me so i could run the other way. this is a picture that one my girlfriends took from across the hall, where i am actually looking around one of those corners and he is coming up behind me!

i don't care about showing him here in public. he humiliated me so many times. i can only hope that he has "grown up" and stopped this behavior. (after all, he would be 50 yrs. old now, and i think there are laws against that!) then there was a boy on my school bus. i absolutely HATED riding the bus. every single day that he lived in clewiston (which, thankfully, wasn't too long) as i would get up to walk to the front of the bus to get out at my stop, he would do the same thing. reach out and touch my badonkadonk. and there were even the male teachers...that liked the girls that had mature young bodies. one even went so far as to try to attack me in a music closet. in his classroom he would call the girls up to his desk and while he pretended to be speaking to them he would try and run his hands up their legs, and if they had on a dress, even further. he was eventually fired...after the near attack in the music closet, when my parents called him at home and threatened to report him to the police. another girls parents beat them to the punch though. just the other day pam told me that HE was the main reason she had left our school in the 9th grade and moved to another state.  and i had never even known the reason she had moved away,until this year, when we reconnected on facebook.


in our youth we have ALL made fun of other kids who were "different." maybe they wore glasses, or braces or had a lisp or "we" thought they were ugly. maybe we called them "retarded" even if they weren't. or stupid when they were really smarter than we were. or fat. or skinny. or a million other things. and "we" were the bullies.


Proverbs 20:11

Even a child is known by his actions, by whether his conduct is pure and right.


and we do it as adults too. sometimes purposefully. sometimes privately. sometimes joking. sometimes not. we say mean things, or we think them. we're rude when people irritate us, or get on our nerves. we lash out at people we "love" when we've had a bad day. we want things "our way." we give the "silent treatment" to our spouses when they make us mad. we laugh when someone does something stupid or wears the wrong outfit, or falls in public. 
 
Proverbs 26:20-21

Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down. As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife.


and every single time we do one of these things...we lower their self esteem. we make them feel worthless or useless or lazy. or ugly. or fat. even if they don't hear it...or see us laughing...even if they don't know us. we kill them, a look at a time. a word at a time.


Matthew 12:36

But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken.



and this brings me back to the little yellow flower. emily is that flower i took a picture of last thursday. she STANDS OUT on a daily basis, amongst all the weeds. she is a CHRISTIAN. she is a cheerleader. an artist. a bookworm. she is beautiful. she stands up for her faith, at 11 yrs. old, even when her "dad" tells her she evolved from a monkey. or when her "dads greener pasture" gives her a box of anti-bacterial wipes for her birthday and "he" gives her a tube of chapstick. when her friends ignore her wish to just run in the bookstore so she can buy a book to read because "they" think books are boring. she blooms bright. and i am so very proud of her. her mama is too.


1 Timothy 4:12

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.



and the dead flower picture taken the next day? that too, is a picture of emily. of what WOULD happen to her, without Jesus in her heart. when people are mean and ugly and judge others for being "different than they are." she would bend and wither up and die. people and circumstances can suck the life right out of you. they can hurl angry, hurtful words at you. they can bully you into submission. they can bruise you and batter you until there is no fight left in you. 


1 Peter 1:22-2:1

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from the heart.For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
"All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever." And this is the word that was preached to you. Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.


but this WON'T be emily. she does have Jesus in her heart. she knows she didn't evolve from monkeys, as her "dad" would have her believe, but instead was created by the Master Designer Himself. she knows that she is smart. her report cards prove that every semester. she knows what is right and good and she shouts it out without shame. she is, after all, an all star cheerleader. and she is a bookworm. she reads her Bible and she goes to church. and her mama, my friend should be commended. for the Bible says,


Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the ways he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

are we training up "our" children in the ways they should go? we should be. because God has commanded us to do so.


and i am so thankful, that i am learning to listen when God whispers to me and tells me to do things. He uses the simplest of things sometimes, to get our attention and to teach us a life lesson. and last thursday and friday he used a weed (flower), of all things. and even though i had to squat and then try and get up by myself, with nothing to hold onto, and humiliate myself in front of the people passing, i'm glad i did it. thank you God, for this simple little lesson. i hope i can remember it. (i'm 50 yrs. old, after all and my mind seems to be going...somewhere.)