Weeds

Hubby and I have been doing a TON of yard-work lately, so weeds have been largely on my mind. We have only been homeowners for a little over a year, and we have been traveling over half of that time, so the yard-work is very slow going. We didn’t realize when we bought the house how overgrown the hills in our side-yards were. More accurately, we realized they were overgrown, but we had no idea how much time it would take to whip them into shape. Slowly, but surely we are making progress. The trash people are coming tomorrow for a “special brush pickup,” and I hope they actually take it all. Our front yard looks like a couple trees fell down in it. Actually they did! We literally have cut down and hauled out a couple trees that the honeysuckle had covered and killed.

I hope I am not being too cheesy in turning everything into an object lesson, but all this work has gotten me thinking about weeds in my own life. Are there things that I have let creep slowly in that are taking root and taking over? I am quite certain that someone planted this honeysuckle thinking it was a very attractive plant. I admit that when it is in bloom, it has pretty flowers and fills the yard with a lovely fragrance. However, when not properly maintained, it grew into a prolific weed. In the same way, have I allowed any sins or attitudes to creep into my life and take over? Perhaps at first they were attractive and justified, so I allowed them to stay. It was hard work to keep them pruned back, so as they began to affect other areas, I pretended not to notice. Finally, they had crept in until it required hard work to remove them.

When I taught I had a couple posters about attitudes always up in my classroom. One had a fighter jet accelerating straight into the sky and said, "Your attitude determines your altitude.” The other had multi-colored paintbrushes and said, “Attitude is the mind’s paintbrush. It can color any situation.” I believe both of these are so true. My attitude affects so much. Even when I finished working today, I had to choose – would I look at all that we had accomplished or all that was still far from the way I wanted it? Sadly I began with the later, but realized my mistake and moved to the former. My aim is that just as hubby and I are slowly making progress in the yard, I am making progress on my own weeds as well.