Breaking Through the Concrete
We came home from a two-week vacation this summer to find our side patio completely overtaken. (See the photo on this blog entry.)
It’s a brick patio that usually takes hours of weed-whacking to prep each spring. But this time? The hot, wet weather did its own thing. Grass nearly one foot tall in spots. Every crack between the bricks thriving with green. What was once a tidy patio set is now sitting in the middle of something that looks more like a wild meadow.
At first, I felt frustrated.
We hadn’t planned for this. It wasn’t what I expected or wanted. But then I thought - life is like that, isn’t it? Change is constant. Growth doesn’t always happen where you think it will, or in ways you can control.
Sometimes it shows up right in the middle of the cracks.
Sometimes it pushes through hard places - like a concrete parking lot overtaken by grass and roots.
And sometimes, like my patio, it grows so fast you can’t keep up.
That’s true for our kids, too. We can’t always predict which parts of their lives will get watered most.
We can’t always choose the conditions they grow through. But we can guide them. We can teach them to push through the hard spots, to find life in places that seem unyielding.
And for ourselves, as moms, it means being flexible. Listening. Watching. Sometimes cleaning up, sometimes letting go. Allowing time. Giving in to our own mental health needs instead of pretending we can hold it all together.
Because real growth is messy.
It cracks through old layers, it surprises us, and it often doesn’t look the way we pictured.
But it’s still growth. And if we let it, it can be beautiful.
