My daughter came running into the house the other day with a huge smile on her face. Behind her back she was hiding a bouquet of dandelions she had picked on our front lawn. She was beaming as she presented me with her sticky pile of yellow weeds she had carefully selected. “Aren’t they beautiful?” “Yes” I told her! “All the love and care you took in finding these pretty flowers makes them the most beautiful” I declared. I tried to find a vase tiny enough to put them in so they wouldn’t all fall to the bottom, and then I carefully placed the vase on the counter where my daughter thought I would be able to look at it whenever I wanted to.
My daughter had no idea that this bouquet she had brought me was considered to many a pile of unwanted weeds and a nuisance to those wanting a perfectly manicured lawn, or something considered wild and untamed that isn’t worth gazing upon when compared to so many others. She simply saw beauty and gave it to me unhindered by how others would label her gift. Her desire was to bring something soft and the colour of sunshine to her Mommy in the hopes that it would show how much she loved me and loved to make me smile.
That gift has been given to me over and over each spring as the soft yellow flowers pop their heads up and my children run out to gather them and bring them to Mommy, who rewards their thoughtfulness with hugs and kisses.
This year again I received a bouquet, and as I placed it on my counter where I could see it, I began to think back to when I used to do the same for my Mom. I remembered how she too had looked upon my gift as if she had received a priceless treasure. She held the flowers like she was holding a piece of my heart.
I grew up in a little place called Eau Claire, I was a wild flower, a country girl, but the way my mom received my gift was the way she saw and received me. I was wanted, I didn’t have to be perfect, I wasn’t a nuisance and being wild and free was wonderful and accepted, and best of all… I made her smile!
So, I want to encourage you to see your children as beautiful treasures. I pray that when you are handed a bouquet of Dandelions from your precious little ones that you will receive them with open arms and that like the dandelions you hold, you will see your children in the same way God sees them, beautiful and free, unique and incomparable, full of light and so worth gazing upon, strong and resilient and so loved by the one who made them and calls them His own.