Weed it out

Tips for your garden and your heart:

I’ve been mulling over a thought this past week. Sometimes little inspirations or philosophical notions hit me like a beam of light from above. (Cue angelic chorus) Whether the light is heavenly, I’m not sure – but the ideas come to me all the same.

Helena and I were sitting on the front walk playing “catch” with our friend’s son. He is two. The ball rolled into the grass and he trotted over to retrieve it. There, along the sidewalk edge – several weeds (I hate to say) caught his attention.

“Want to pick the weed?” he asked, sweetly.

I laughed, out loud. Obviously this kid’s parents had been teaching him about yard maintenance.

I graciously obliged and the three of us began picking weeds along the walkway – some of us more efficiently than others.

I thought, “Awesome! I can babysit and do yard work at the same time!” Yeah right. It lasted a few minutes until he got bored and started running towards the street. Helena went the other way, crawling up our railing-less, concrete porch steps. Awesome.

Don’t worry, I caught them both at the same time with my long, elastic arms.

So when did this inspiration hit me? It was during the two quiet minutes before chaos broke loose. We were making our weed pile on the sidewalk and I noticed the kids were basically just popping the tops off the weeds. Bless their hearts.

Fortunately, I have the benefit of being married to a lumberjack/gardener extraordinaire. So I’ve been schooled in the art of weeding.

Grab the weed by the base. Get down in there. Your fingers are going to get a little dirty. You might need to do a little twisting, rocking – but soon you will feel that root loosening – now pull straight up.

It’s the root that you’re after.

A feeling of satisfaction washed over me as I successfully uprooted that sucker, and I thought, “What other areas of my life need to be weeded?” 

You can go as deep as you want with this analogy:

Weeding in your garden and in your life takes maintenance – or before long it will be overtaken by something you didn’t intend to be there.

You can’t just hack off the tops of your problems – they will just keep coming back.

Weeds are strong and invasive like our vices. Greed, lust, sloth, anger. You didn’t mean to raise a crop of the seven deadly sins, but here you are…

You didn’t mean to eat the whole package of Oreos/Watch the whole season/drink the whole bottle of wine – but you did. (Ok, I did.)

What weeds/vices in your life need to be uprooted?

Or maybe it’s not a vice – maybe it’s something that was good, but has taken over ground meant for more important things. Maybe you need to do a little weeding to bring more balance into your life.

In two weeks I start a new part time job at my school. There were so many things I loved about being an art teacher, so many things I will miss – but at this point in our lives my full-time career was taking up too much precious earth. I want to make room to plant new things with my daughter and with our family.

Weeding is not easy. Sometimes you give up after two minutes. Sometimes you need to get out the shovel.

But keep at it, my friends. We shall overcome!