Wildflower Writes

Yesterday, driving down the street to work, I didn’t notice all the stumps along the side of the road. I knew there was a lot of construction, and the trees had been cut down to widen the road. Their remains had been left, leveled to the ground, for months now. Today there was a big yellow excavator blocking half the street. It was making it’s way up one side of the street, apparently using an arrowhead shaped attachment to dig up the stumps of the trees that had once lined the street. The stumps, turned upside down with roots exposed, were huge, gnarly monstrosities aligned along the road. Sometimes I wish I could see people’s roots. What is keeping them upright? Where have they drawn their strength and vitality from? Did they have to struggle to get what they needed out of life? Do their roots run deep or stretch out wide? Some people are ashamed of their roots, even though they are the basis of who we are. Our ancestors, our parents, our friends, and our faith are all parts of who w...

Pre-Mapquest, for those of you who don’t remember, finding an unknown address relied on memory, hastily written notes on a napkin or scrap of paper, or a hand-drawn map never made to scale. With Mapquest, or Google for you non-traditionalists, you could get step by step directions, and an accurate point by point map. With recent upgrades, you can map out up to 10 locations on one trip. You can avoid certain roads if you know they are under construction, or if you don’t like toll roads. Even with such fantastic technology, it’s still fallible. Mapquest relies on the information that it receives. It doesn’t always know about new roads or closed roads or flooding or changed street names. Sometimes, for one reason or another, it’s just plain wrong. I think the success people experience in life is decided largely by the set of directions they go by. Some people don’t have any direction. They just wander through life, letting detours and the influence of others determine whe...