About Weeds and Life...

I had a really great day today.

I slept in. Really slept in. Seriously, I think it was around 10 a.m. when I finally rolled out of bed for good (I love a good book and warm covers on a Saturday morning!)!

We took the kids to the park. Dug in the sand some...threw some balls around...flung some frisbees. It was beautiful, not too hot, but definitely shorts weather.

Nice!

Came home, jumped in the pool (which was REALLY cold!! Brrrrr!!). Josiah lasted the longest in the polar bear water. Then we walked home. (Tim had to take the car because of his leg but I WALKED both to and from. More steps in my day. Are you proud of me??)

Got home from the pool and walked in the gate and noticed the weeds. Not the two weeds in the front yard that I pulled on the way in...The FOREST of weeds in the backyard...seriously, it was a forest.

HOW, you might ask, did this take me by surprise??

I never come in the front door, which is really on the side of the house behind the gate. I always go in through the garage. (except late last night when I came home with Sarah in Tim's car and realized not only did I not have the garage door opener, I don't have a key to the house, but that is a blog for another day).

So, feeling in a good mood, and not quite ready to leave the beautiful sunshine of the day, I grabbed a pair of gardening gloves and a shovel and went to work.

Now, weeds are a problem for any contientious homeowner...especially if you have an HOA...but weeds are much more than that for us. Weeds can be a death sentence to my daughter. She is allergic to, I am not kidding, 23 of the 24 common allergies in Arizona. She gets asthma from these allergies. She doesn't play outside a lot.

I started thinking about this as I was pulling these weeds. A good friend of mine, Heather once wrote about how weeds are like sin in our life and how hard it is to pull them out. I can't remember all of what she wrote anymore but this is immediately what came into my mind as I tried to pull these demons out of my yard. The first thing that I thought of was how deadly these weeds were to my children. Isn't that so true of our lives?? The sins we commit as parents are, quite literally, deadly to our children. I am forever hearing things I say (usually when I'm angry) come back out of the mouths of my children.

As I started getting the weeds out of the ground I would rake them out of the way and be amazed how many still remained. Sometimes we have to work out a few of the "smaller" (as if there are smaller sins) and "easier" to pull sins to reveal that there are even more and more that we need to work on. Not that we can remove our sins by ourselves, Christ did that on the cross once and for all, but we do need to recognize our sin and ask for forgiveness for them. And, even then, we need to be ever vigilent and accountable to not fall back into old patterns of sin.

I found it interesting that some of the weeds were easy to pull, and some were, well, not so easy. Some took a shovel, both hands, and all my weight to pull out. Isn't that just like sin? Some are so deeply ingrained and imbedded it takes A LOT of work to remove them from our lives.

I also noticed that the weeds that had come through the "weed guard" (ironic, huh?) were harder to eradicate because while the weeds came up through the weed guard but the shovel wouldn't go down through the weed guard to pull it up! Isn't that similar to how we do "things" to make us seem like the good church-going Christians we feel we "should" be and, in the process, make it harder on ourselves and others to be accountable to staying away from the sinful issues in our lives because admitting our problems would make us seem "less" somehow in our fellow brother and sister christians eyes??

I'm certain I'm not doing justice for all the thoughts that went through my head while I spent TWO HOURS of EXHAUSTING WORK eradicating the jungle of weeds in my yard...but through the same number of hours spent in prayer and confronting the Lord on the sins in my life and the thoughts in my head I feel just a little more tidy (like my yard), while knowing that I have a long way to go. My yard needs a landscaper, and so does my soul. Fortunately for me, the Great Landscaper, is ready and willing to give me a makeover and HE'S ALREADY PAID THE PRICE!! Isn't that great news?!?

I'm off to bed, I'm EXHAUSTED, have a blessed Sunday!!