My friend texted me the other day as she was pulling weeds in her flower beds. Apparently she'd let them grow too deep and they were difficult to get out. She said she kept laughing at herself for letting the weeds get that far gone. Hot and frustrated, she knew she had to get them out or her irises would die. (Which was completely unacceptable! We've both invested much time and effort in our yards this year!) She started to pray, asking Jesus to help her persist and get the weeds out. Each time she prayed instead of giving up, the weeds came out. Together, she and the Lord saved her irises.
Then she said, "Isn't this so symbolic of our lives?"
She is so right.
For my readers who don't garden, I can tell you that weeds are a serious pain in the butt. It's my least favorite part of gardening. You have to bend over and sit, which is painful to an old back. The dryer the ground, the harder they are to remove. Yet weeding is a process that's absolutely necessary or you are wasting your time. If you don't regularly pull the weeds from your beds, they can take over and choke the life out of the flowers. Letting that happen is so disheartening, especially if you have put a lot of work into planting, growing and nurturing those flowers.
I have heard it said that your home (inside and out) is a reflection of who you are as much as your checkbook. I've lived in my house for a long time. I let my yard go for years! Anyone who's known me for a period of time prior to recovery knows that the grass was often knee-high, the "beds" were a mud pit of weeds and dead things. (My neighbors weren't very appreciative, to say the least.)
Last year I decided it was time to have a little pride in my home. I spent quite a lot of time fixing the drainage problem, redoing the beds and regularly cutting the yard. Nothing grew, but nothing died, either! This year I got real industrious and ambitious and decided to try and turn my black thumb into as green a one as I could. The end result was awesome and I was quite proud of myself! (My neighbors are happy and have even stopped to compliment how great the yard looks!)
But we get tired, don't we? Gardening is fulfilling but it is also a LOT of work! Digging is HARD. In the spring I was all excited and started going to town outside. Then once it was "done," and my back and neck were killing me and it got really hot outside, and my allergies and sinuses were kicking, it became much harder to motivate myself to go outside and maintain my projects. In fact, this year I stayed out of the yard for about a month after spending at least two obsessing about what I was going to plant, where I was going to plant it and making my husband and sons get out there with me.
Husband came home one day recently and said, "Um, hon, are you tired of yardwork? Cuz there's lots of weeds in those beds that need to be pulled." He offered to do it, but I said I'd take care of it… Yet it was still another week before I got out there and did anything.
The Bible says not to borrow trouble, for today has enough of its own. One way to borrow trouble is to let things go while they're still small. Why do we wait until the small things become big things before we deal with them? How many times have I learned how much easier it is in the long run to deal with things immediately? I mean, I KNOW this, right? Yet for some reason, I still sometimes let fear rule. It happens to all of us. It's called DENIAL. How often do we attempt to avoid conflict because we feel overwhelmed, or we don't want to deal with things, or we are afraid of what changes dealing with reality will require of us?
Rather than weeding the beds in our lives on a regular basis, we let them grow in an unruly fashion. Which makes them all the more difficult to get out. Plus it becomes a MUCH BIGGER job! It's not enough to pull at the top of a weed. You have to get the ROOT out, or it will just grow back and multiply. That's much easier if you get it while it's still small, rather than waiting and allowing it to take root and grow.
LOL! When my friend texted me that question: "Isn't this so symbolic of our lives?" I'm like, oh yeah, it is! Then just for giggles I went outside and looked at my own beds, and the giggling stopped. I realized she was more right than I originally thought. Weeding the beds IS symbolic of our lives. And it's Recovery 101. Weeds are our addictions, hurts, habits and hang-ups. Weeds are SIN. When we have weeds in our garden, we have obstacles blocking us from Christ and from Truth.
Consider Steps 10 and 12:
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
It's easy to draw the correlation from Step 10 to the points I'm making here… Weed those beds EVERY DAY. If you see a weed, grab it at the root and yank that sucker out! Don't let even one continue to grow once you see it. Or it will choke the life out of you.
But what does Step 12 have to do with this, you ask? (Jen, are you suggesting we apply apply recovery principles and truth to our yardwork? Really?!) Yes. I am saying that, but even more I'm saying apply it everywhere, to everything. Gardening, what you eat for breakfast, what kind of toilet paper you buy... Every. Single. Thing. Notice that step says "to practice these principles in ALL our affairs." Well you can read just like I can. It says ALL. And that is just what it means.
Why? Because when you're in recovery, you are in it for life. It's just when you think you can lay off for a minute that you probably need it the most. Same thing with Truth. When you live according to Truth, you know that Truth is EVERYWHERE. If you work the program, read your Bible and obey the steps (as well as the 10 Commandments, etc.), what you begin to find is that EVERYTHING is connected. You start to notice that even seemingly innocuous, apparently unrelated things in your life that you never would have thought to correlate with recovery suddenly begin to have relevance and spiritual significance—even pulling weeds in your garden! God uses whatever and whomever to open your eyes to His Truth. To make you more aware of Him.
And if you pay attention, you will find that it's not what you LOOK at, but what you actually SEE that counts. God is always trying to show us and tell us things. We merely need to keep things simple, stay in tune with Him. And then we'll find that there is nowhere we go and nothing we do where He isn't right there with us.
God will use anything and anyone to teach you, to draw you closer to Him, to help you know and love and desire Him more. It's pretty cool, actually. Most of my life, I felt aimless, like a leaf in a whirlwind with no solid place to land. That is a really scary way to live! As I continue to move through recovery and work on my relationship with Christ, I begin to be more and more conscious of Him. I see Him everywhere, in everything, and instead of freaking me out, I'm soothed. It makes me feel grounded. Solid. Settled. Peaceful… All things you cannot truly have outside a real and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
In addition, walking closely and personally with Christ will help you sort out what's really true and what isn't. I am not ashamed to admit that when it comes to gardening, I'm more John Deere than Martha Stewart, aight? When I first got out in the yard, thinking I was doing so great, my mother begged me to stop! I'm like, what?!?!? (Apparently I couldn't tell the difference between a weed and a flower and had totally messed up the yard by cutting down and digging up all the stuff I was supposed to keep, and watering and planting all the stuff that was supposed to go. Go figure.)
So I was determined to do better. And these last two years, I have! I don't know that I'll ever really have a GREEN thumb. But it's no longer BLACK, either! Before I imagine plants literally trembled when I walked outside with my hair in a bun and yard tools in my hands because I was like the Grim Reaper and they knew they were gonna die. Last year, nothing grew but it didn't die. This year I am GROWING things! It is VERY exciting!
However, I still loathe weeding the beds. But it's got to be done, so I do it. And I try to do that in every area of my life, not just in my garden.
Husband came home one day recently and said, "Um, hon, are you tired of yardwork? Cuz there's lots of weeds in those beds that need to be pulled." He offered to do it, but I said I'd take care of it… Yet it was still another week before I got out there and did anything.
The Bible says not to borrow trouble, for today has enough of its own. One way to borrow trouble is to let things go while they're still small. Why do we wait until the small things become big things before we deal with them? How many times have I learned how much easier it is in the long run to deal with things immediately? I mean, I KNOW this, right? Yet for some reason, I still sometimes let fear rule. It happens to all of us. It's called DENIAL. How often do we attempt to avoid conflict because we feel overwhelmed, or we don't want to deal with things, or we are afraid of what changes dealing with reality will require of us?
Rather than weeding the beds in our lives on a regular basis, we let them grow in an unruly fashion. Which makes them all the more difficult to get out. Plus it becomes a MUCH BIGGER job! It's not enough to pull at the top of a weed. You have to get the ROOT out, or it will just grow back and multiply. That's much easier if you get it while it's still small, rather than waiting and allowing it to take root and grow.
LOL! When my friend texted me that question: "Isn't this so symbolic of our lives?" I'm like, oh yeah, it is! Then just for giggles I went outside and looked at my own beds, and the giggling stopped. I realized she was more right than I originally thought. Weeding the beds IS symbolic of our lives. And it's Recovery 101. Weeds are our addictions, hurts, habits and hang-ups. Weeds are SIN. When we have weeds in our garden, we have obstacles blocking us from Christ and from Truth.
Consider Steps 10 and 12:
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
It's easy to draw the correlation from Step 10 to the points I'm making here… Weed those beds EVERY DAY. If you see a weed, grab it at the root and yank that sucker out! Don't let even one continue to grow once you see it. Or it will choke the life out of you.
But what does Step 12 have to do with this, you ask? (Jen, are you suggesting we apply apply recovery principles and truth to our yardwork? Really?!) Yes. I am saying that, but even more I'm saying apply it everywhere, to everything. Gardening, what you eat for breakfast, what kind of toilet paper you buy... Every. Single. Thing. Notice that step says "to practice these principles in ALL our affairs." Well you can read just like I can. It says ALL. And that is just what it means.
Why? Because when you're in recovery, you are in it for life. It's just when you think you can lay off for a minute that you probably need it the most. Same thing with Truth. When you live according to Truth, you know that Truth is EVERYWHERE. If you work the program, read your Bible and obey the steps (as well as the 10 Commandments, etc.), what you begin to find is that EVERYTHING is connected. You start to notice that even seemingly innocuous, apparently unrelated things in your life that you never would have thought to correlate with recovery suddenly begin to have relevance and spiritual significance—even pulling weeds in your garden! God uses whatever and whomever to open your eyes to His Truth. To make you more aware of Him.
And if you pay attention, you will find that it's not what you LOOK at, but what you actually SEE that counts. God is always trying to show us and tell us things. We merely need to keep things simple, stay in tune with Him. And then we'll find that there is nowhere we go and nothing we do where He isn't right there with us.
God will use anything and anyone to teach you, to draw you closer to Him, to help you know and love and desire Him more. It's pretty cool, actually. Most of my life, I felt aimless, like a leaf in a whirlwind with no solid place to land. That is a really scary way to live! As I continue to move through recovery and work on my relationship with Christ, I begin to be more and more conscious of Him. I see Him everywhere, in everything, and instead of freaking me out, I'm soothed. It makes me feel grounded. Solid. Settled. Peaceful… All things you cannot truly have outside a real and personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
In addition, walking closely and personally with Christ will help you sort out what's really true and what isn't. I am not ashamed to admit that when it comes to gardening, I'm more John Deere than Martha Stewart, aight? When I first got out in the yard, thinking I was doing so great, my mother begged me to stop! I'm like, what?!?!? (Apparently I couldn't tell the difference between a weed and a flower and had totally messed up the yard by cutting down and digging up all the stuff I was supposed to keep, and watering and planting all the stuff that was supposed to go. Go figure.)
So I was determined to do better. And these last two years, I have! I don't know that I'll ever really have a GREEN thumb. But it's no longer BLACK, either! Before I imagine plants literally trembled when I walked outside with my hair in a bun and yard tools in my hands because I was like the Grim Reaper and they knew they were gonna die. Last year, nothing grew but it didn't die. This year I am GROWING things! It is VERY exciting!
However, I still loathe weeding the beds.
I think I'm going to try and talk my friend into giving me an iris from her garden—or at least teaching me how to grow one—to symbolize what Jesus will do with a life, any life, that is wholly surrendered to Him. And, to symbolize what ONLY HE can do with that life. If you recall, she couldn't pull those weeds out on her own. It wasn't until she refused to give up and PRAYED, asking Jesus for HELP, before the weeds came out and her irises were saved. We cannot do it ourselves. If we could, we'd have already done it.
After all, ONLY GOD can make a tree.
Thank You, Jesus! Not only have You helped me to grow instead of die, You have breathed New Life and poured Living Water into every area of me, inside and out. I believe we are all weeds, growing unruly and out of control, before You love us and turn us into the beautiful, living, growing flowers You mean for us to be. I am grateful that You actually CARE about every single thing in my life… even my garden! You know the number of hairs on my head. You care for the swallow; how much more You care for ME! I love You and I thank You for teaching me through every circumstance, every person and every occurrence in my life, no matter how small or how great. You are THE AWESOME!
Amen.
After all, ONLY GOD can make a tree.
Thank You, Jesus! Not only have You helped me to grow instead of die, You have breathed New Life and poured Living Water into every area of me, inside and out. I believe we are all weeds, growing unruly and out of control, before You love us and turn us into the beautiful, living, growing flowers You mean for us to be. I am grateful that You actually CARE about every single thing in my life… even my garden! You know the number of hairs on my head. You care for the swallow; how much more You care for ME! I love You and I thank You for teaching me through every circumstance, every person and every occurrence in my life, no matter how small or how great. You are THE AWESOME!
Amen.
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