Queen Anne's Lace

Queen Anne's Lace has always been one of my favorite flowers. Maybe because one of my first childhood memories of learning about plants involved going on a nature hike at summer day camp and getting to pick a stem of Queen Anne's Lace. Or maybe because it grows wild all summer in the waysides, clothing untamed places in delicate beauty.

Queen Anne's Lace—I love how a common weed possesses a regal name. What's the difference between a weed and a flower, anyway? Isn't it in our perception? Certainly not in God's perfect design.

Last summer I loved picking the wildflowers that grew along the edges of the campus where I lived. A friend let me also pick the zinneas that he had planted. Over the course of the summer I had so much fun arranging dozens of vases of these flowers, both for myself and to give away to others. In many ways those arrangements became a metaphor for what I saw God doing in my own life. God assembles both the "flowers" that I plant and tend (i.e., my goals and plans) with the "flowers" that grow wild by the wayside (i.e., situations and circumstances that I didn't intend) to design my life as a beautiful arrangement.