My husband, Ken, planted a large sunflower garden in our backyard. There are several different varieties, Russian Mammoth, Autumn Beauty, and several others. I love them. They are all different and unique, but all beautiful.

But there is more to them than just the beauty of the flowers. When the flowers begin to fade, they look kind of ugly. The leaves turn brown, and I just want to cut them down. But Ken won’t let me. He said the seeds provide food for the birds, and we should leave them. My perfectionism and need to have everything “in order” makes me want to clean them out.

But Ken looks at things differently. He is willing to look past the unloveliness of the plant to provide life sustaining sustenance to the birds. He has the ability to focus on what is really important.

It can be that way in life, too. In our society that values perfection, looking youthful at all costs, we lose sight of true beauty. it is said that we all have a ‘face’ that we portray to others. We want everyone to like us. We don’t want anyone to see our flaws. And some of us want to make everything look perfect around us. But life isn’t like that. People aren’t perfect, and we don’t always do everything perfectly, and things don’t always turn out the way we want them to. We can’t control everything.

My friend, Asher, says we all have a sense of rejection in our spirit that flows down from Adam and Eve being put out of the garden. And that drives our need for perfection, some of us more than others. We need to understand that God loves us just as we are. Sometimes He uses our imperfections to bring life to another person. Sometimes when we think we have it all wrong, we actually have it right, and when we look back, we can see the hand of the Master weaving our lives into a beautiful tapestry.

Photo by The Library of Congress