Weeds

Since moving up to the mountains, I have been having a daily controversy with the weeds. It seems to me, and our neighbor agrees, that you can dig out all the weeds in a given area, come in the house exhausted but delighted that you got rid of the things, and then when you go outside again in a couple of hours, there's a whole lot more weeds where you just weeded! I don't get it. How come they grow really fast but the pretty stuff you plant doesn't?

I will have to say however, that pretty plants put into my little rock garden last year, are really blooming beautifully this year. There were a few weeds there too, but I carefully removed them so that the pretties would show off well.

You know, this reminds me of the human life. I looked up the definition of weed in the dictionary, and believe it or not, what I found is so true of the "weeds" in our experience. The dictionary says that a weed is: "An unwanted plant, especially a wild plant growing where it is not wanted."

I have weeds in my life, and if you're human, I bet you do too. Impatience is one of mine. I want this unpacking to be done and over, but it can't be until we do several things in the house - Like a Master Bathroom shower that needs to be moved to where the huge corner tub is (that we NEVER use) and a lovely cedar lined closet put where the old shower was. And when our addition is completed (isn't started yet) we will have a huge closet for ministry items. It's hard to look at those two trailers that are currently parked in our driveway, and just dream them away - empty!

Another of my weeds is busyness, and unfortunately that one is tied to impatience. It's hard for me to just relax, to sit and write, when I can think of so many other things that I want to do to make our home a restful place. Clutter drives me nuts! So I just keep working at it, endeavoring to find a place for everything and putting everything in its place. All the busyness is tiring, and then it's easy to be short or touchy with others.

So what to do with all these weeds? Just keep plucking them out, I guess. I can spray them with some sort of weed-killer, but they are toxic, and anyway, you end up looking at dead weeds instead of live ones. Is that really any better? And the other thing to do is to plant lovely flowers where there is just plain dirt and weeds. One can do that in the character too. Pluck up the unwanted weeds (behaviors, thoughts, and attitudes) and plant lovely flowers that will give you and everyone who looks on, a lift.

Happy planting!