July 11, 2025

There is no way to overstate the fact that I do not have a green thumb. When my husband is out of town, he leaves pages of instructions for our house plants and his garden, and even then—well, let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend placing bets on anything leafy that is under my care.

That said, one thing I’m surprisingly good at is leaving things alone. Which is how I ended up with a patch of milkweed growing wild and happy in our front yard. I didn’t plant it. I didn’t water it. At first, it was just some scruffy stalks I figured I should probably pull out. But I didn’t, mostly out of distraction or uncertainty, and by mid-summer, it had turned into a small, lovely patch that a few bees and monarchs seemed to enjoy. Now, a few years later, it’s a full-blown milkweed jungle. All I’ve done is stay out of the way, but it brings me joy to watch the monarchs dance in and out, the bees gather at the blooms, and the caterpillars settle in. It’s not much by garden standards, no neat rows or careful design, but it fills a need and it makes me happy.

This summer, my favorite part of the whole chaotic tangle is two determined milkweed plants that pushed up through a crack in our driveway, right at the garage door. They didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They didn’t ask permission. They simply trusted their own God-given worth and grew anyway. I do my part by carefully driving around them when I come and go.

As humans, we’re often tempted to measure ourselves by what’s polished, productive, or well-managed. But maybe there’s something faithful about embracing who we are, even when we don’t quite fit the mold. About trusting that God has planted something good and valuable in each of us, something worthy of growth even we're a little scruffy as we go about it. And maybe, by just being ourselves, we are exactly who someone else needs. We fill a need in ways only we can.

My prayer this week is for you to make space for the wild and tenacious spark of the Divine within you. And to remember that sometimes it's enough to show up, root deep, turn toward the sun, and let God do the growing.