Weeds

When I created this blog, the named reflected my thoughts on the new phase of my life – my children had grown into adults and no longer needed to be mothered. I have tried to change my role in their lives, although I do often backslide into mothering, I’m afraid.

The infrequency of my posts reflects the newest phase of life I am in – I began working full time, outside my home a few years ago. No need to speak to that, as I am sure that is the norm for most.

Besides my insightful, thought provoking (or so I’d hoped) blog posts 🙂 , the other thing that has suffered during this transition, is the amount of time I have put into my gardening. More specifically I have let weeds infiltrate, in fact flourish, in my flower gardens.

Over the years while weeding, I have often reflected on how it parallels our spiritual health. Weeds, just like sin in our lives, grow when we overlook or underestimate them and don’t take the time to rip them out. Weeds grow right alongside and sometimes throughout the stems of the plants themselves. They are right there, mixed in with what is good and right. With sin, we need to be sensitive and aware when some behavior or attitude, creeps into our life and begins to fit right in, to flourish.

I have been watching an area in one of my gardens for a while now. Growing up and through some French Lavender is a weed. A weed with long flowing tendrils and purple flowers. It fits right in with the lavender. It’s pretty, so although I did spend time pulling SOME of it out, I was not very aggressive with removing all of it. That weed has now infiltrated itself through the entire patch of lavender. I was out there this morning, trying to eradicate it, all the while thinking, “Why didn’t I take care to remove all of this at the beginning, when I first noticed it!” It is a bigger job now, and the weather has turned much warmer. Removing it will be much more unpleasant and time consuming now, but it is my fault of course.

I hope to remember to apply this lesson to my spiritual life and be very aggressive with eradicating sin that creeps in my life, camouflaging itself and getting comfortable right alongside what is supposed to be there.

Sin, just like weeds in our gardens, has no place in our lives, let’s rip it out!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Lesson (Hopefully) Learned

Hmmm…I must have something on my mind, I must!

But what is it? What is bothering me, keeping me up at night?

Nothing.

A few months ago, I got out a small inexpensive spiral notebook I had sitting around and filled it up with all the really pressing things. Things that felt overwhelming. Things I didn’t seem able to fix or control. Then I dated them and closed the notebook. I got on my knees and asked God to please handle them for me because I simply couldn’t take it anymore.

Then I forgot about them.

About 4 months later summer came and a topic that I had once been very concerned over, resolved. I got out my little spiral notebook and gazed through the list. Some of the things on there I hadn’t even remembered I had been worried about at all. They had all been handled or completed and all was fine.

What a relief. All it took to have peace was to let go.

I hope I remember this lesson.

“You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.” Isaiah 26:3

A New Day

Unemployed mother- I heard this phrase on some sort of Brandy Bunch minisode recently and thought “That’s me!”  My kids are in college now. Every day they interact with friends I’ve never met, eat food I haven’t cooked, study subjects I am not teaching and sleep in beds in rooms that are not in our home. The truth is They Don’t Need Me Anymore.  I have been downsized. Or is it, I am the victim of downsizing? Anyway, it’s hard.  So I’ve been asking myself “What now?” A blog is not something that has ever appealed to me. I have never been one who journals. I spent many years writing articles for our local homeschool support group and articles for my daughter’s monthly newspaper. The last couple of years I have felt completely dried up, done as a writer. I’ve been empty, with nothing left to say, so choosing to at least attempt one blog post is a surprise to me.

My goal here is to try to find a way to encourage others as we walk this path together. I want to recapture a vision for my future. I have an inkling of an idea, but I am seeking the Lord’s guidance as I take one little step at a time. I want to look at each new day with enthusiasm, an adventure. I’m not there yet, but I am going to try. I loved being a stay- at- home mother, and as my daughter told me yesterday “You’ll always be a mother”, but there was a time, 30 years actually, when I wasn’t one. Time to find out where the path leads.

There I did it, I wrote a post.