Sometimes the pain is so intense that words just can’t describe.  Sometimes the yuck just keeps coming and tears and tissues won’t wash it away.  This kind of pain doesn’t yield to pills or clever maxims.  Prayers don’t make it go away.

Wesley came down from playing his Wii game to find me drowning in my tears. His face screwed up in anger and pain, he said, “I don’t want anybody hurting my mommy!!”  I hugged him and told him it would be okay.  I told him I had been reading about Jesus.  He went around doing good.  He healed people like me, forgotten, broken people that no one could help.  He can help me.  He will help me.

I know that he suffered in the garden.  He bled for me.  He cared for me enough to die for me.  He knows my burden and he feels my pain with me.  I can’t write what happened or the source of my pain.  I’ll just tell a story, like the Savior used to do.

Once upon a time there was a gardener who only liked roses.  One day in her garden, a dandelion grew.  She thought it was a rose until one day it bloomed and it was a bright yellow flower.  It was different and she didn’t like it.

The gardener said, “Go away, you don’t fit in the garden box.”

The dandelion said, “I’m a flower, God made me like this.”

The gardener said, “Only roses can live here. Be a rose, then you can stay.”

“Roses are big and beautiful and expensive,” the dandelion insisted, “They
have thorns.  I am free.  I have no thorns.  I am yours, God sent me to you.  I have many petals like the rose.  Look at me and see.  I’m beautiful too, God sent me to you.”

“You aren’t beautiful,” scolds the gardener, “You are a weed, and no one
likes you.”

“Look at the children,” the dandelion said sadly.  “They love me.”  Tears dropped like dew.

“Children don’t count,” the gardener said impatiently.  “Only important people matter. And important flowers.  You can change,” insisted the gardener.  “If you become a rose, you can stay and I will love you.”

The dandelion died of shame and a broken heart that day, but God had mercy
on her.  He turned her yellow petals into white flying seeds that the gardener’s children blew all around and now they grow in the grass and the fields and the roadsides where unimportant people can love them. 

Someday I hope in heaven that I have a garden full of dandelions.  I’ve always loved them.  They are beautiful to everyone until they grow up to learn that they aren’t supposed to be beautiful.  Because I never grew up, they will always be beautiful to me.  I see myself in them.