Everything's Coming up Wildflowers

Once upon a time there was a young girl, apparently born into the wrong family. The right family would have been more predictable, more reliable, more... together. They would have lived in the right kind of house with enough bedrooms for everyone to have their own. The house would have had a properly manicured lawn, and a walkway lined with brightly colored flowers in matching pots. Every weekday evening, at about the same time, the handsome husband would have pulled into his space in the tidy garage and been greeted by his wife - the woman he had loved since he first laid eyes on her some 30 or more years ago. This father would have loved his wife and children completely and would never even have considered doing them any wrong or leaving. The mother, who loved him the same way, secretly thanked God every day for him being so caring and dependable. They would have given their children just the right amount of love and discipline and been great individual examples of what it meant to be masculine and feminine and in love. In perfect and harmonious concert they would have modeled a mature, loving and respectful relationship between a man and a woman. This little girl was sure that kind of family would have been right.

Instead, that family was left. Left to learn that life wasn't always going to be predictable. Left to figure out how to live together, even with what often seemed were too many people, with too little money. Left without a father figure of any sort, much less the ideal. Left without a mom who was free to pack lunches, bake cookies, make perfect dinners at the same time each evening, and still find time to do all the laundry, keep the house just the way it should be kept and tend the flower pots that lined the ideal walkway to the front door.

Instead, this young girl and her five siblings were shown how to work the washer and dryer as soon as they could reach them and learned to feed themselves from what was available in the cupboards or fridge - both of which looked like they could use to be cleaned out and organized a bit more often. They were shown that a mom left to raise six kids alone would need them to become able to fend for themselves sooner than later.

It was probably no accident that the upper cupboards of their less-than-perfect house were lined with clippings that urged "Expect a miracle," "Be the change you want to see in this world," "Nobody can make you unhappy without your permission," "To succeed, you must first be willing to fail," and many others. There were also quotes on magnets that read, "A good memory is one that can remember the day's blessings and forget the day's troubles", "The only way to have a good friend is to be a good friend", "If you love someone, hurry up and show it" and a favorite, the Serenity Prayer:

God grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change;

the courage to change the things I can;

and the wisdom to know the difference.

Taking that refrigerator magnet wisdom to heart and turning often to this prayer, the young girl ultimately learned she was much like the strong, beautifully persistent wildflowers that pressed up out of the overgrown lawn or cracks in the sidewalk leading up to her less-than-perfect childhood home. She wasn't like a potted flower that needed certain reliable conditions to bloom and would soon be out of season. She could handle unpredictable aspects of life and weather all kinds of storms. She had had a strong woman as her model because that was what she was going to need to be. The lack of the preferred form in her family had actually been right for her all along.

And there you have it.