Last week my family helped me find a name for my blog. My husband, Chris, came up with this one and I love it. If you know me well the name will not surprise you at all, but I still want to offer some deeper explanation.

First, I do need to share some honorable mentions, because there were a lot of good ideas, and a lot of laughs!

My oldest son, Lewis, had a lot of fun playing with my name. He suggested:

Cedar Barks

Cedar’s Roots and Boughs

My father, Dan, suggested:

Danny’s Daughter’s Deckchair (from the movie “Danny Deckchair,” set in Australia)

And Now You Have Read Cedar

Mom contributed the sharing life byline, because she knows how I value that. There was also a lot of talk about “Herding Kittens,” because we love kittens in our home and can relate to the sentiment quiet a bit raising four young boys. Chris also suggested “Wilding the Tame,” because he knows how that speaks to my parenting goals.

Many suggestions were specific to our adventures “Down Under,” as we left home 3 weeks ago and are flying to Australia 2 weeks from today for Chris’ sabbatical. But Chris is optimistic that I will want to continue blogging after we return from Australia. So while the purpose of it right now is to share our big adventure with all of you back home, it will continue to be a way I can share life through writing, wherever we are.

So “Seeds and Weeds” definitely stems from my love of gardening. My favorite parts of gardening are planting and weeding. Honestly, I need to grow for others to get the harvesting done.

What I love about planting is getting my hands in the earth, really. I also love the miracle, the potential in the seeds for life. I just “tuck them into bed,” as we say, and God does all the work creating so much bountiful life! I think we’re all like seeds, with incredible potential for bearing fruit. But I love that Jesus does not compare us to seeds. He says we are the branch and He is the vine. That’s a bit different, if you think about it. As a branch we are part of an already established life. Cut off from it we have no potential.

Jesus compares the words of God to seeds, and talks of sowing them generously. So I hope to share encouragement as I live life, knowing it’s only my connection to the vine that will produce fruit.

What I love about weeding is getting dirty and intimate with the plants. It is satisfying work to see a clean bed, much more fun than any other kind of cleaning, yet similar.

When I was a child I was vehement that “there is no such thing as weeds!” I loved dandelions. That’s a bit of an understatement. They were my favorite flower. I defended them fiercely and celebrated them heartily, calling them God’s splatter painting of sunshine. I still love them, especially now that I have children. I think they are God’s gift to children, because children love to pick flowers (even boys!) and dandelions are free for the picking anywhere, anytime. No adult will miss one. Some would even pay you to remove them.

Now that I am an adult, and a gardener, I acknowledge that weeds are still plants, just out of place. I am not in a war with them, but I must remove them if I want any vegetables. And I enjoy doing it! I definitely uproot the dandelions from my garden and throw them out into the woods. I do not replant each one as my children sometimes think I should.

I think this is a beautiful illustration of growing up. When I was a child I thought that life was all roses. Dandelions were roses, essentially. When I would insist that, “there is no such things as weeds!” it applied on multiple levels. Sadness and pain were fleeting things to be avoided. As a teenager who began reading the Bible with fervor I was fascinated and perplexed by how much talk there was of joy in suffering.

But as I grow I value “weeding” experiences more and more. I am learning to welcome conflict with and between my boys and the challenges of working through it. My husband says I like fighting, and I can see a little truth in it, even though I dread conflict impulsively.

We watched an excellent Japanese movie this spring called “In This Corner of the World.” It was a beautiful portrayal of everyday life and how it was devastated by war. The main character marries a man she does not know, congenially. But when she runs into an intimate childhood friend, likely crush, there is finally tension in their marriage and her husband complains, “In all these years you have never shown me your angry face!” I find that a poignant illustration of real love.

Originally I wanted my blog name to somehow touch on one of my favorite bible verses that says, in essence, “The people are but grass, fragile as wildflowers. The grass withers, the wildflowers fade, if God so much as puffs on them. Aren’t these people just so much grass? True, the grass withers and the wildflowers fade, but our God’s Word stands forever.” Isaiah 40:6-8

I guess I like the idea that we are weeds, compared to our great God. I take great comfort in this reality, because I know that he delights in me at least as much as I delight in dandelions.

Finally, the name “Seeds and Weeds” is an expression of my two nicknames in life. I always wanted a nickname as a kid, and finally my high school basketball team gave me the nickname “Seeds.” Really is was probably “Ceeds,” short for Cedar, but it works on two levels.

My other nickname was “Cedar the Weeder” at Practical Farmer’s of Iowa, where I worked before I had kids. They used to auction me off to weed on farms, because I loved it so much and didn’t have my own land at the time.

So this is where we start, and only God knows where we’ll grow together.