Recently I’ve tried to make a firm commitment to my daily routine of devotional and prayer in the garden. Most days I’m greeted by deer and cows, like neighbors stopping by to say ‘Good morning’. Well, I greet them, but they seldom reply. I don’t think they’re morning people. Surely it can't be my humor. How could a cow not laugh when I say, "Good Mooooorning"?
Recently I’ve added certain weeds — crab grass specifically — to the daily dialogue. Every morning I say to them, “Well, there you are again” (feigning surprise), and then pluck them up, only to find the next day they are waiting for me again, as if we have a standing appointment; and I show up — like it or not — because if I don’t our one on one quickly becomes a group gathering. If left untended for long, weeds spread.
This morning it dawned on me that the same is true of the weeds growing in the garden of my heart. Each day begins with me and the Lord walking through the sins and struggles seeking to spread over my life, plucking them up one by one, only for Him to find them there the next day. Decades of this practice has taught me a few things. 1) Although there are persistent sins that just seem to never go away, daily attention to them prevents them from spreading, multiplying, and consuming my life. 2) Like the persistent weeds of spring and summer that naturally die off in winter, as I move rapidly toward the winter of m life, many of those once omnipresent — and sometimes seemingly omnipotent — struggles naturally fade away. 3) Although this perpetual pruning is a never-ending, daily duty, He enjoys the time with me, and I with Him. Our work together isn’t fun, but is fulfilling.
I’m learning a lot from these weeds, some of which I even admire despite their intrusiveness in our little Eden. I’ve come to respect their resilience. No matter how many times I pluck them up, if possible, completely by the root, they keep coming back. It’s really quite fascinating to witness their stubbornness to live. As I remove the same weeds from the same beds time and time again, I think of how often and easily I’ve waved the white flag and given up. Give up on goals, given up on people, given up on my prayers, given up on myself. I witness these weeds defiantly coming back day after day, and I reflect on the parable of the persistent widow. “Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:7-8) Will he find faith on earth? As I contemplate the things that I’ve prayed for a thousand times, I ask myself, “Will he find faith?” and then I pray for the resilience of a weed.
I’m learning there is far more below the surface than above. This is especially true of the crab grass. I’ve lost track of the times where I started to pull up a sprout of crab grass only to watch the root system stretch across the ground for a few feet, finally uprooting far from the place where I started to pluck it. Looking back over my life and the sins that just wouldn’t go away, I realize too often I was trying to remove the fruit instead of the root; healing the symptoms and not the sickness. While I am distracted and drained from fighting one thing, the real source of the problem goes untouched. The older I get the more I’m convinced there are really only two sins: selfishness and pride. I’m pretty sure any other sin you can conceive is just an offshoot of these two transgressions. While I’m battling bitterness because someone isn’t giving me the credit or the attention I “deserve”, the real root cause — pride — escapes my attention, enabling it to flourish while I languish. One thing that years of marriage counseling — both giving and receiving — has taught me is that the problem that brings you to counseling is almost never “THE problem”. When we want things to get better, we’ve got to be willing to keep digging until we get to the real root.
I’m learning that some weeds have an astonishing strength that grips the ground and refuses to let go. In my weed hall of fame, the Crown Jewels are two weeds that were comically difficult to remove. Unlike our plants and flowers, I don’t know the name of most of our weeds, which is a shame because these two deserve that I put respect on their name. Last year Honey purchased a tool known as a hori hori. The word hori means “to dig” in Japanese, and “hori-hori” is an onomatopoeia for a digging sound. It’s a heavy serrated multi-purpose steel blade for gardening jobs such as digging or cutting. This thing is a Cadillac of tools. The precision and speed with which I can almost effortlessly uproot most weeds using this tool is astonishing. This fact is what makes my encounter with these two weeds all the more impressive. Most weeds are no match for a skillfully wielded hori-hori, but these two put my serrated blade in the dirt, pun intended. For one of the weeds, I had to dig a hole one foot in diameter and nearly that deep. The expansive and entrenched root system brought up nearly a bucket worth of dirt with it. The other was very small and unimpressive on the surface, but once I dug it out fully I found what looked like a sort of nut that served as an anchor preventing it from being pulled up. Although He wasn’t necessarily addressing sin specifically in this story, the account from Matthew 17 finds Jesus having to remove a demon from a boy that all the apostles combined couldn’t cast out. When they later asked Jesus how He could cast out the demon and they could not, His reply was, “this kind only goes out by fasting and prayer” (Matthew 17:21). This was a not so subtle rebuke from Jesus telling His students to “do better”. You aren’t spending enough time preparing yourself to do battle with your personal demons that dig in and don’t want to let go. While I’m working to remove these most stubborn weeds I remind myself that although it gets easier, it never gets easy.
I’m learning that some weeds are hard to distinguish from the things we want to grow. A common refrain while I’m weeding is, “Honey, is this a weed or is this something you planted?” You’d be surprised at the times we stand over the object of question and shrug uncertainly. There are two examples that we kept letting grow larger and larger because they “looked like they might be something.” They weren’t. For most of us, our greatest strengths can also look just like our greatest weaknesses, depending upon how they are wielded. It’s good to be loving, compassionate, and helpful, but it’s bad to allow yourself to be treated like a doormat. It’s good to be frank, honest, and transparent, but it can easily appear rude, cruel, and hurtful. “Honesty without empathy is cruelty.” — bell hooks. Patience and tolerance is not far removed from apathy. Boldness and bullying can be hard to distinguish when you are on the receiving end.
If I’ve learned anything from these morning sessions, it’s that God can use anything to teach a lesson. Yes, He wants us to “consider the Lillies”, but He also wants us to see “seed that fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants” (Matthew 13:7) and ask “Where then did the weeds come from?” (Matthew 13:27).
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