I grew up in the Midwest. As a very small boy I remember being thrilled that in the spring so many "yellow flowers" shot up in our yard and with my dirty little hands I would gather clusters to bestow upon my mother. She would dutifully place them in a small glass or vase and pretend they were lovely, after all I was a kid and it was the thought that counted, especially to my mom. I, of course, did not realize I had given her a bouquet of, well, weeds! Nor did I realize that I would be able--indeed required--to develop an appropriate detestation of dandelions as a universally recognized lawn blight. This realization blossomed partially as a result of exposure to our next door neighbors, the Wilsons--Harold and Elsie. They were lawn-manicuring, rose-growing, dandelion warriors. They were older with no children or pets and they, in fact, would chase either off of their precious grounds. From our porch swing I would watch them fighting the dandelion war, digging them out by the roots with some sort of specialized dandelion rooter. What a pain. It must have irked them terribly that our yard was the dandelion sanctuary of Rose Street. (Or maybe they felt our "neglect" made their yard look especially well groomed.)
We really didn't care about our dandelion problem because we just figured they got whacked weekly by the lawn mower, anyway. Dandelions are amazingly durable. After being beheaded one day, their fuzzy yellow selves would often pop back up the next and quickly go to seed. And what fun to blow those spherical cluster of wispy seeds from the stem and watch them sail off in the breeze toward the Wilsons' yard.
Well, as I said, I eventually came to appreciate that dandelions were not a lawn enhancement. It's not so much the sunny little flowers themselves, but the low, ugly, mower-dodging leaves that take over and choke your nice green turf. Weed killer became my weapon of choice as an adult dandelion hunter. I just didn't have time to battle them by crawling through my expansive yard digging them up by the roots. Any way you slice it, though, if you want rid of the dandelions you have to get them at the roots.So, the metaphor is not that hard to identify, is it? Our lives are the lawn, our problems the dandelions--weeds--that we sometimes have failed to even identify as such. These are tenacious because they usually have significant, unseen, deep roots. We may whack their heads off by focusing on altering our outward behaviors--over and over--but the behaviors just keep coming back and going to seed. Mowing them down may keep our friends and neighbors from seeing them briefly during a "try-really-hard" phase, but those who live with us know that we "ain't really growin' grass." This is not to say that we don't need to get serious about addressing the problem behaviors. But, if we want to beautify the landscape of our lives long-term we usually have to go for the roots of our issues. Otherwise the behaviors--outward manifestations of what's underground--will just keep popping up and frustrating us. I believe this is why Jesus focused on heart change versus rule-keeping and sin management. This is also where I believe therapy can be useful--getting at the roots. While we will always have to deal with some weeds in this life, change from the inside out--or from the underground up can allow us to produce truly beautiful growth and not just a deceptive field of yellow.
Copyright 2010 John D. Deyo, M.A. MFTI
