Petals Everywhere. Still Blooming.

Some flowers are neat.

They grow exactly where they were planted. Their petals behave. Their stems stand straight. They look like the picture on the seed packet.

And then there are cactus zinnias.

Their petals stick out everywhere. They twist and curl and reach in every direction. They can look a little wild, a little unruly, and depending on who is looking at them, maybe even a little messy.

I happen to think they’re beautiful.

And maybe that says something about why I love them so much.

Because somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that beautiful was supposed to look a certain way.

Put together. Polished. Successful. Thin enough. Wealthy enough. Smart enough. Faithful enough. Wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, saying the right things, and somehow managing to keep all of our petals perfectly in place while doing it.

That sounds exhausting.

And it leaves an awful lot of beautiful women wondering what is wrong with them simply because their petals don’t behave.

Maybe Messy Isn’t the Opposite of Beautiful

Here’s something I’ve learned:

Not everybody is going to think a cactus zinnia is beautiful.

Some people would rather have the perfectly symmetrical flower.

That doesn’t make the cactus zinnia any less beautiful.

Beauty has never required unanimous approval.

I think the same thing is true about people.

You can spend an enormous amount of your life trying to fit into somebody else’s definition of what you are supposed to look like, believe like, live like, accomplish, own, or become.

Or you can finally realize that maybe you were never supposed to look like every other flower in the garden.

Maybe your petals were always going to stick out a little.

God Has Always Been Pretty Good With Messy Things

Years ago in Honduras, I stood in front of a large cross made from what most people would probably call junk.

I’ve seen mosaics made from broken pieces that became more beautiful because the pieces were broken, not in spite of it.

And I keep coming back to the same thought:

We are very quick to decide something is ruined because it doesn’t look the way we expected it to.

God seems much less bothered by that.

I have seen mosaics made from broken pieces that became more beautiful because the pieces were broken, not in spite of it.

He has a long history of making beautiful things out of unlikely materials.

Broken pieces.

Discarded things.

Messy stories.

People who don’t feel qualified.

People whose lives don’t look polished enough to be displayed anywhere.

Maybe what looks like a pile of broken pieces to us is simply material He hasn’t finished arranging yet.

Broken in my eyes. Beautiful in His.

There Is Room for the Flowers That Don’t Stay in the Lines

That matters here.

Wildflower After Winter was never meant to become another place where you have to straighten your petals before you walk through the gate.

Come in messy.

Come in unsure.

Come in tired.

Come in with questions.

Come in still figuring out who you are.

Come in with half your petals pointing in directions you didn’t plan.

There is room for you.

Because the garden would be terribly boring if every flower looked exactly the same.

And maybe some of us were never meant to grow in neat little rows anyway.

Maybe we were supposed to be the ones with petals everywhere.

Still growing.

Still becoming.

Still beautiful.

Still blooming.