My oldest son scattered the wildflowers we had gathered on the table for us to identify and press in a heavy book. I arrayed the specimens and pulled out the local field guide I had purchased the night before so we could learn more about each flower (beyond just their names) before drying and pressing them.
I drew the dandelion between us with the tip of my index finger. “This is a dandelion. Let’s see what the book has to say about it!”
I stuck my thumb on a page with a sunny dandelion. I skimmed through the habitat and characteristic descriptions for the facts I knew would catch my son’s attention, watching my son’s eyes light up as I spun the globe next to us to show him where they originally lived and how far they had been brought to reach our backyard.
“Now let’s look for the buttercup!”
As I thumbed through the yellow flower section, I paused as my eye caught another picture of a dandelion. A fall dandelion. I squinted my eyes and looked between our dandelion and the one on the page. Is this the fall dandelion or the common dandelion? What’s the difference? I shook my head and continued on. On the following pages, my heart rate spiked as I passed the narrow-leaved hawkweed and the common hawkweed, both of which looked just as much like the fall dandelion and common dandelion—and whatever this was on my table.
I pressed on, searching for the buttercup—until I realized that just like the dandelion, there were a variety of flowers in this book that reassembled the buttercup.
My eyes skimmed the descriptions, searching for a thread of difference between them. I turned over my already-wilting flower, glancing between it and the book. How trained must a person’s eye be to catch the subtle differences? How were these differences even discovered? Somehow I had spent my growing-up years gathering wildflower bouquets for my mother and never saw the differences between these species.
This is why forest foragers are often warned to be careful of what they gather to eat. Sometimes the edible plants and the most toxic plants are nearly identical to the eye and hand, but the stomach soon catches their differences. Canadian moonseed versus wild grapes, nightshade versus blueberries, false morel versus morel mushrooms—one full of toxins, the other a nutritious delight.
Plants aren’t the only piece of creation that fool us. Over the years, people have deceived me with their kind words, helping hands, attentive eyes, and listening ears. A woman I trusted said she believed me when I came to her with my story of abuse and said that she too had witnessed the very abuse I spoke of. She offered to help with whatever need I had, to listen whenever I needed. Then one day I learned she was the leak of information being passed between me and my abuser. To add further salt to the wound, she was the children’s pastor. When I had a confidential meeting with the lead pastor concerning my privacy amongst the pastoral staff, he shared this confidential meeting to my abuser’s family—despite having promised multiple times such a thing would never happen.
What appeared as a safe place with safe people turned out to be a place of poison, ready to destroy me.
Though the plants I mentioned appear at first glance to be nearly identical, they all have their giveaways: the shapes of their leaves, the structure of their stems, the shade of their skins. However minute and slight, there are ways of seeing the poison from the beauty—if we have eyes to see it.
I want to believe the best in others. When I learned of the virtue of charity—that love hopes all things—I wanted so badly to embody that. I’m prone to negativity, and I wanted to be one filled with hope towards others. But in a desperate attempt to show charity to all I met, I stopped listening to discernment. I ignored the variations in behaviour from the trustworthy and the betrayers in the name of charity and grace. The signs were there, but I ignored them, because I believed it to be the most loving thing to do.
Jesus doesn’t call us to trust everyone in the same way, but to develop these eyes of wisdom that can see the slight details in a person’s character. It takes wisdom to see when a person truly cares or is using us to their advantage, to see the difference between kindness and manipulation. It’s not a lack of charity to treat a person according to the character they’ve shown us. Mercy can be displayed in both forgiving a truly repentant person and in setting boundaries that don’t allow a person to continue to harm us.
Perhaps charity isn’t hoping that they never meant to harm us, but hoping that one day they will learn how to rightly love another. I hope one day the spiritual leaders who betrayed me will learn how to protect the vulnerable and fight for the safety of the abused, but I will not allow them the chance to practice that on me again.
Scripture hands us a paradox: Be wise as serpents, yet as charitable as doves. While love hopes all things, it also doesn’t toss its pearls before swine. Charity, while always ready to show grace, knows when to shake the dust from its sandals. This is wisdom, but wisdom takes time—it is often gained through mistakes and the addition of gray hairs. I must trust in the work the Spirit does in me, and seek to grow in wisdom as he calls me—even as we collect dandelions by the roadside.
The featured image, “Summer Cup,” is courtesy of Julie Jablonski and is used with her kind permission for Cultivating.
Lara d’Entremont is a mother and author. She is the author of A Mother Held: Essays on Motherhood and Anxiety. Lara writes stories for the young and old alike, always striving to share the light of hope in the darkest of places—whether it be essays for a new mom through postpartum depression or a novel for a child wondering if their art matters. She is a member of The Maker’s Project, and her work has appeared in Christianity Today, The Rabbit Room, Verily, and others.
You can learn more about her work at laradentremont.com.
Thank you for this very helpful distinction.
Powerfully written, Lara. “While love hopes all things, it also doesn’t toss its pearls before swine. Charity, while always ready to show grace, knows when to shake the dust from its sandals.” Yes. And this is indeed a costly wisdom to gain. Bless you as you continue to press into this process. May you find sweet and true goodness along way – a beauty that is remedy to the poison.