Grow Where you are Planted

We’re only a few days away from the beginning of fall and each morning lately I can feel how much cooler it has gotten overnight.  However, even with the chilly mornings, we have been enjoying beautiful weather during the day.  After about fifty days without hardly any rain, it is apparent we are stretching our summer weather right up until the beginning of fall and possibly beyond.  I don’t mind, since any lack of rain during the summer is always made up for the rest of the year. 

Even with the lack of rain, I saw something recently to prove even plants have a determined spirit of their own. Just down the road as I was heading to work the other morning, I saw a sunflower.  It was fairly small, maybe three feet tall.  But it was a perfect little sunflower, facing directly towards the uprising sun.  The sunflower wasn’t perched in a pot on someone’s porch.  It wasn’t in a garden in someone’s back yard.  And it wasn’t growing in the grass in someone’s front yard.  It had somehow found its place of rest on the side of the road.  It wasn’t in the ditch where the dirt may have been soft, but in the middle of the gravel on the shoulder of the road.

 

That sunflower did not pick the easiest spot to grow.  It is not tended to by anyone with constant attention or water.  It is in a precarious spot where harm might quickly shorten its season of growth.  And it is not standing beside other, larger sunflowers which might protect it from the wind or other forces of nature.

The sunflower found itself in its resting spot and had no choice but to grow where it had been planted. 

While it may be just a flower, this little sunflower is a good reminder of what we can achieve even if we do not end up exactly where we believe we should be.  This little sunflower did not end up in a cushy garden with soft, moist dirt and heaps of tender loving care.  It ended up in hard, sharp gravel, with no protection and up against the force of wind from constantly moving traffic.

But the sunflower continues to thrive.  It continues to grow.  There is no reason for it not to.

I think we can all be like this little sunflower.  We should always strive to grow where we are planted.  When we work to achieve growth in our lives, we can thrive.  We can blossom.  We have to remember that the possibilities in light of any hardships are always attainable. 

This little sunflower is a tiny ray of sunshine in my day but the message it brings means so much more to me.  I look for the little sunflower every morning now and it brings a smile to my face every time.