Parsnips

I garden.  This year for the first time, I planted parsnips.  I love parsnips.  They are sweet and good for you, and I was really looking forward to growing them. 

In the row where they were planted, some little green plants emerged.  But they didn’t look like I expected.  I thought a parsnip seedling would look a lot like a carrot.  These looked like a weed.  Could they be parsnips?  Should I pull them up, or leave them alone? 

So, of course, as anyone would I googled pictures of parsnip seedlings. 

Similar.  

But I also have this weed that comes up everywhere that looks a lot like that parsnip.  What to do? 

So, I left them. 

And waited.

Turns out they were weeds and my parsnips never sprouted.  

But I thought about the parsnips and how that’s so much like life.  Something arises in life, a circumstance, an opportunity, a hardship.  Something arises in our children, an attitude, an ambition, a behavior.  Something arises in our loved one, a discontentedness, a restlessness, a sadness.  Something arises inside ourselves; an uncertainty, a sorrow, a fear.  

And we are terrified.  We scramble to pluck it, fix it, medicate it, smooth it over.  

It's so hard to just let it sit, let it grow, and see if it’s a parsnip.

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