A Broken Flower
We have a 4 year old son….That’s really all I need to say about that, lol. No, this boy is all boy and completely unpredictable and fairly volatile. He is always changing my mind on what exactly little boys raised under pretty consistent circumstances and consequences are capable of. Which brings me to my title….A broken flower…
You can probably imagine where this is going. I had planted pale purple coneflower and it had taken several years for the rootlets to spread and really take off. This year they’ve been amazing and I was rather impatiently waiting for the first ones to bloom. Apparently my son had been watching and waiting also, for that opportune moment when someone made him mad, and the had the perfect form of retaliation in mind.
They literally bloomed that morning, 3 beautiful pale, purple coneflower and I was so excited! Imagine my dismay when I came home from a trip to the funeral home for my wonderful aunt and discovered that my 3 blooms were wacked off and lying on the ground. Then from my husband came the rest of the story. It seems that Gabe was upset that he couldn’t tag along to the visitation and decided mommy needed to be taught a good lesson. Dennis of course disciplined him but you can’t bring a flower back, so what are you to do?
Well, the first thing we learned is its just a flower. Yes, it was special. Yes, it taken several years to get to this point and yes he was very wrong for what he did. But he’s more special. So, I had to forgive him and bring him back into my loving fellowship.
The second thing Dennis brought to my attention was how much care we put into those flowers. We carefully plant them, water them, pick off bugs, divide them and protect them from any bad elements that we can. How much more important are our children?
How much more important is it that we nurture them in the fear and admonition of the Lord? That we carefully water them with truth and grace? That we protect them from friends who can lead them wrongly and other influences that can send their life in a path God doesn’t want them to take?
I’ve heard all this stuff about our children being salt and light to a lost world and frankly I think its bunk! Would you take a beautiful, delicate flower you worked for 5 years to see bloom and then set it out on a frigid winter night on your porch, completely unprotected? Of course not, common sense will tell you it will freeze and die. The same thing is happening to our Christian youth. 80% or more are walking away from the Christian faith. Is it because they’ve been set as a delicate flower on the porch to freeze? Perhaps we should be considering that.
Once my flower was chopped off, I couldn’t put it back and when our children are bruised and battered from the world’s assault on them we can’t repair that. We can protect them ahead of time by being vigilant and proactive about where and who they spend time with, what they watch and whom they learn to admire. We can teach them over time about filtering the good from the bad, but just like a tender shoot needs more protection so do our young children.
If flowers need that type of care and consideration, how much more do the eternal souls of our children need?