Dandelion Wishes

When I was about seven years old, I was standing on our front porch, holding a giant fuzzy puff of a flower.  I thought that if I made a wish on the flower, then blew the fuzz into the air, my wish would come true.  I had made my wish, taken a deep breath, and was about to blow that fuzz as far as I could when I heard Dad’s voice behind me, “Don’t.”  “Why?” I asked.  “Just don’t do it.  Ever.”  And he left to run an errand with my mom.  Sensitive soul that I was, I went to my room and cried.  Dad always answered my endless questions and made sense of things that I couldn’t figure out.  I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t answer this simple question.  About a week later, I was either suffering from a very short memory or a very tiny need for rebellion, because I tried it again.  I held the stem and inhaled, ready to blow the fuzz up into the air in a beautiful cloud, when Dad’s hand closed over it.  “I told you not to do that,” he said.  “But you never told me why,” I said.  “I don’t have to tell you why,” Dad said.  “If I say not to do something, you don’t do it.”  One of my older sisters walked by and said, “Just tell her about the bees, Dad.  She’ll stop.”

Bees?  I looked up at my dad in panic.  I was afraid of millions of things as a little girl, but bees were at the top of the list.  “Come on,” Dad said, taking pity on me.  “Let’s take a little walk.”  We walked down to a bike path that had a field next to it that was filled with yellow flowers.  Standing next to the field, Dad said, “Come here and look.”  He pointed out one of the yellow flowers; up close, I could tell it was a dandelion.  I looked around and saw them everywhere.  I hated dandelions; to me, they were little yellow beacons of terror because they were always covered with bees.  “See how many dandelions there are?”  Dad asked.  I nodded and moved to stand behind him.  Dad said, “That’s why I don’t want you to blow on those.  Every time you do, you send thousands of seeds into the air, and everywhere they land, dandelions grow.”  “Those fuzzy things are dandelions?” I asked.  “Yes,” he said.  “And they don’t just attract bees; they’re weeds and they’re hard to get rid of.”  I didn’t care about the weeds; he had me at “attract bees.”  I promised him I’d never do it again.

Dad didn’t have to tell me why.  I knew that he loved me whether or not he answered my questions.  But on that day, he did—because he saw me.  He saw the questions and the fear and the sensitivity that no one else seemed to see.  And because my dad saw me and loved me, I had no trouble believing that my heavenly Father did, too.  Though I couldn’t foresee it as a seven-year-old, there would come a day when I would need that knowledge so badly, my life would depend on it.

When I was in the middle of my battle with drugs and alcohol, I would get on my knees in the middle of the night, begging God to either free me from the terrible prison I was in, or take me home and end it.  Night after night, month after month, I begged.  And was met with deafening silence.  I started to believe that God was no longer listening.  With every night that passed without any change, my heart felt like another piece of it had broken.  I felt forgotten, unseen, unloved, and lonely.

Then one morning I got an email from my mom, who wrote, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but God does.  You’re never forgotten, my Renee.  Remember Hagar.”  The last thing I felt like doing was reading a Bible story, but when midnight came, and along with it, the familiar loneliness and desperation, I looked up the story of Hagar in Genesis 16.  Her story begins with Abraham’s story.  God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the dust of the earth and the stars in the sky.  But Abraham waited and waited, and his wife, Sarah, did not bear him any children.  Sarah, desperate and impatient, concocted a plan to have her slave, Hagar, sleep with Abraham, thinking that Abraham’s descendants could be borne by Hagar.  Hagar did become pregnant by Abraham, but it caused so much turmoil between her and Sarah that Hagar ran away.

Pregnant and completely alone, in an area so deserted and desolate that it must have reminded Hagar of her own life, Hagar came upon a well and stopped to rest.  The angel of the Lord spoke to Hagar at the well, asking her what she was doing and why.  After she explained, the Lord spoke these two words to her:  “Go back.”  He promised that Hagar would be the mother of countless children, including the one she was pregnant with at the time, Ishmael.  He gave her a grim picture of Ishmael’s future, telling her that he would be “a wild donkey of a man,” who would fight with anyone and everyone.  Yet Hagar didn’t argue with God or ask Him for a different answer.  Instead, she looked up and, in wonder and gratitude, said, “You are the God who sees me.  I have now seen the One who sees me.”  She named the well where she had stopped to rest “Beer Lahai Roi,” which means “well of the living One that sees me.”  And then—she obeyed God and went back to Abraham and Sarah.

In the most desolate and lonely place and time of her life, Hagar experienced the miracle of being seen by Almighty God.  He saw her, a woman who had been mistreated and maligned by everyone around her.  At this point in her life, Hagar must have felt that no one saw her simply for the woman she was: they only saw Hagar, the slave; Hagar, the woman whose mere presence caused turmoil; Hagar, the pregnant, insignificant woman who eventually ran away to stop the problem she felt she’d become.  For Hagar to finally feel seen—and by God, no less, must have overwhelmed her.  It must have been the splash of water that her parched and thirsty soul had been longing for.  It also gave her the strength to obey God and go back to the place she’d been running from.  Her circumstances hadn’t changed, but she had.  She’d been seen by God—seen, known, and loved.

Hagar’s story became a part of my story—another piece of the journey that became my recovery.  Along that journey, I stopped begging God for answers and started obeying Him, even when I didn’t know why.  As part of that obedience, Monty and I moved here five years ago, believing that God was calling us here.  When we pulled into our new driveway for the first time, I noticed that our yard was covered in dandelions.  And I remembered the loving way that Dad had chosen to answer my questions that long ago day—because he saw me.  I reminded myself that God saw me, too, right in that moment when I felt almost as scared as Hagar must have.  I stepped out of our car and into our new life, remembering that, as always, God truly saw me.

I have a picture of a dandelion I embroidered that I hung where I see it daily.  It reminds me of a special moment with my dad and the lesson he taught me that day: to obey God without question, and to know that God loves me, whether He answers my questions or not.  It also reminds me that God sees me—the little girl I was who was terrified of bees, always wanted answers, and had an imagination so big she was sure her dandelion wishes went straight up to heaven.  And He sees the woman I am now, who very often views life as a minefield of dandelions but tries her hardest to look up and take the next step.  He sees me when my pain is so overwhelming that I cry out to Him for mercy.  He sees me when I can’t take another breath on my own and I panic.  He sees me when I feel misunderstood and my sensitive heart is hurting.  He sees me.  He knows me.  He loves me.  And after all these years of wandering in a desert of my own making, I’m finally learning to see Him and to trust that no matter how I’m feeling or what my circumstances are, His blessings to me remain the same—like the seeds from one fuzzy dandelion or the promised descendants of Abraham—too numerous to count.

For every Hagar out there right now, this song is for you: