weeds

It may seem odd, but one of my favorite things to do is pull weeds. Perhaps it is a way to work off some aggression, maybe I just enjoy being out in nature and the feel of the warm sun, breezes, and the soil in my hands. Most likely it is a chance to be alone with my thoughts. At any rate, pulling weeds has taught me much about weeds and their characteristics; their root structures, especially. For you really need to get the whole root out to get rid of the weeds.

On my daily walks through our neighborhood I have noticed another aspect of weeds, or maybe it isn’t so much about weeds as it is about people and how they manage their weeds. Weeds usually crop up at the edges of yards, as though their seeds blow in from a neighbor’s yard or far away field. It is easy to dismiss a few small weeds at the edge of a yard as insignificant. They are mowed down along with the grass and it is thought they are gone, it doesn’t interrupt the green after all. But then they grow back and there are more of them. More of them to be ignored, mowed down, then to grow back and multiply. I have seen many yards gradually taken over by weeds this way; once a few weeds, so easy to manage; now a yard of weeds requiring a major overhaul of the yard. It is a sad thing to see.

There are weeds in our lives as well. They crop up as small bad habits, misconceptions, misunderstandings, or just-once-won’t-hurt kind of behaviors. They sneak in at the edges of our characters where they are easy to dismiss as insignificant and can be “mowed down” because they blend in so well with (or covered up by) who we really are. And just like weeds, they grow and multiply and can eventually take over.

Many years ago a friend told me of her experience with daytime soaps. Watching them had numbed her to the seriousness of some of the aspects of life they portray. When someone came to her for help with a real-life situation, she responded by dismissing it as though it were no big deal, it happens all the time (it did happen all the time on TV). This attitude was enough to shock her into getting that horrible “weed” out of her life. Her story caused me to evaluate that weed in my own life and realize the work I needed to do.

A verse of one of my favorite children’s songs goes like this:

I have a garden, a secret garden,

Where thoughts, like flowers, grow day by day.

‘Tis I must choose them, and tend, and use them,

And cast all wrong ones like weeds away.

Goodness and love are seeds that I sow

God up above will help me I know

To keep my garden, my heart’s own garden

A place where beauty will always grow.

Maryhale Woolsey