WEEDS

So, Wednesday Thursday and Friday I was at my sister's on the farm working. It was not easy work. I was pulling weeds, cob webbing stalls, riding horses, feeding horses, and moving fences. While I was weeding I had a lot of silent time by myself. It was really good for me.

I was thinking about how I was pulling all of these different types of weeds. There were some that were huge, but surprisingly easy to pull out of the ground. There were those that were huge and needed both my sister and my entire body weight to pull from the ground. There were those in rocky soil, which were easier to pull out. There were small ones that seemed almost impossible to pull. There were small ones with huge roots that spread wide and deep. These ones seemed to never end. Those were my favorites to pull. I felt so accomplished after pulling up such a small weed with the massive roots attached.

I remember before I left for MC having a conversation with my wonderful woman's pastor. She was using some analogy about weeds in a garden. Honestly, I was so sick I don't remember anything else that she said, but I was reminded of it as I was weeding this past week. She was discussing the consistency that one has to put into weeding their gardens in order to keep from becoming completely overwhelmed.

Before I went to MC my garden was covered in weeds. That's all there was. You couldn't even see the ground because there were so many weeds. They were entangled in each other and most of them were huge! It was going to take more than a little weed plucking to get most of them out.

I went to MC on March 10th and the team there began pulling. With their help, I was able to get a lot accomplished. We pulled many of the strong, deep weeds and my garden was looking so much better. There were still some little weeds, but the plan was for me to continue gardening when I returned home on July 6th.

I got home and I decided to take a break from all the weeding. I was so tired. Well, if you are like me, then you wouldn't know this as an avid gardener would, but weeds grow and spread very quickly. (Lesson Learned) In this time that I was "resting," more and more weeds were sprouting and the smaller ones continued to grow. It became a very messy garden again.

As I was pulling the weeds in Rensselaer I was thinking about the different types of "weeds" in my life. I have a lot of the weeds that appear small above ground, but have long, deep roots that seem to never end. These are things such as "busy-ness" "approval addiction" and "pride". These are the weeds I leave in my garden because I don't think that they will be that big of a deal. WRONG! These weeds intertwine with other weeds and make it even more difficult to pull them out. I need to continue working on these seemingly little weeds while I am working on pulling the giant, tough weeds from my garden.

The giant weeds that are currently living in my garden are "fear" "shame" "guilt" and "selfishness". I am using my resources and my support system to receive help to pull out these weeds. It may take all of our body weight to pull these out, but I know that it will feel so much better after they are gone.

I have plenty of other weeds in my life that are not mentioned above, but I will not unload ALL of my baggage in this post. ;)

Today I am reminded that every single day I need to be working on pulling out the weeds in my garden so that it does not become such a daunting, overwhelming task that I can't do on my own. I will look to the master "gardener" (My God) to teach me how to rid my garden of these draining weeds.