Wander to wonder.

Mama's pale green eyes stared with deep compassion into my tear-glazed blue ones."If you expect everyone to love as much as you do, you'll break your own heart." Her words made themselves at home in my mind, and like anything that makes an impact, her words have resided with me since that fall day.

I adore a multitude of women for braving to mother my wildflower heart, but I give the most gardening credit to my Mama and Mawmaw. Those two women are my godsends - praying over me in the winters, smiling through tears of joy as I blossom in the springs, cooling me in the heats of summers, and helping harvest my heart every fall. In a nutshell, my Mawmaw has taught me to trust God more each day, and that sometimes when you're not quite sure what to say "different strokes for different folks" can go a long way. Lola is ever-patient, kind, and understanding. I hope my future daughters and granddaughters one day see Jesus in me the way I see His love and mercy in her.

Mama, who is strikingly similar to yet vastly different from my grandmother, has never gone a day without loving, forgiving and hoping for me in a way that reflects Jesus' heart. Michele is a huge part of who I am; she's the woman who introduced me to this world and to my very own wildflower heart. She once said to me something like, "you're a wildflower, blooming in the sidewalk cracks." How fortunate I am to have such a resilient heart, and more importantly a mother who recognizes and conjures it; especially as I walk this earth.

Life will push you and pull you. Sometimes it will even chew you up and spit you out leaving you unsure of which direction is up and which is down. Our hearts will be tugged at and torn to bits in the names of both love and hate, confusing us about whether to choose forgiveness or bitterness the next time around. As a result of spinning sin, we cannot expect a fallen world to extend love and compassion into our own pits of confusion and heartache. And yes, often times choosing to love will feel like making a choice to break our own hearts. But folks, if the Lord who is love himself actively lives inside of us, we do not have the choice to say no to compassion. In fact, He gives us the honor of saying "yes" to displaying His perfect love toward others. Only in Jesus can we encounter the healing and growth our desperate hearts so long for in the desert. We are called to take that very redemptive gospel of Jesus to our neighbors and the nations. In caring for those we are called to love we bring heaven down to earth, and all the wildflower hearts find their roots growing into the foundation of a radical identity in Christ. Finally, steeped in the promises of God, we are free to fully bloom. It's not that we will never again have to sprout in Saharan desert sands or the broken sidewalk of inner-city America, but never again should we be striving to grow alone and in vain.

As much as I've learned from the women warriors in my life, venturing into this world and its battlefields on my own have been a vital part of me learning about life. Mentors serve as a sort of compass in a confusing world, but no two lives are to designed be lived in exactly the same way or to go in completely identical directions. We must all, each and everyone, come to our own - our own hypothesis and theories and conclusions - and set out in search of a further understanding of life and love as it exists in Christ Jesus. In Jesus our wandering wildflower hearts take root, and in place of the wandering we turn and find ourselves awestruck by His infinite wonder. God is then the only power that can move us and shake us, and rightfully so.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18), and He grows His wildflowers in all the places we wouldn't dare think to plant a rosebush. He knows our hearts will be broken, but He promises to be broken alongside us while remaining our strength. Jesus offers to lighten the load of our burdens. When loving feels like too little too late and too much too soon all at the same time, He's there with us if only we ask. It is so much easier to let the world make us bitter and cold and jaded, but it is so much more rewarding for both ourselves and the kingdom of heaven when we are able to find freedom through forgiveness and choose to love again. Time and time again winter has stolen my petals and numbed my roots, but never since I have known and loved the Lord has spring forgotten to come. And I promise, you too will come through each season stronger and more beautiful than ever before.