In the Weeds...

I started this post a couple weeks ago...and since I seem to be in a blogging mode/mood today, I thought I'd knock it out. It's been a weedy couple weeks. Applicable.

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This post has been ruminating in my head for awhile.  Maybe I should say, my mind has been ruminating on this post for quite some time. (confession: i had to go to dictionaryDOTcom to check my usage of the ruminate word...you get the point, hopefully).

It's been a 'heady' last year or so... that referring to days and months of analysis, questioning, reading, thinking, over-thinking, and all the other words that you can imagine 'heady' to refer to. I would say that over-analysis is one of my spiritual gifts, but the problem with that is  1) I don't know how spiritual it is and 2) I am completely convinced that it's not a gift.

Anyway... while I'm not sure that this is exactly what Jesus was referring to, the headiness has seemed to connect me to a parable and passage in Matthew 13 where He is talking about the seeds and the sower. Of particular relevance and application is the portion of the parable where Jesus talks about seed falling among the weeds. The result is that the growth from the seeds is choked by the weeds.

In His explanation of the parable, Jesus says that this seed/weed interaction indicates a person who grows to a place of fruitfulness in spiritual things, only to have that fruitfulness snuffed out by worries and worldly cares. I'm not sure what the original Greek says, but there is a reference in most translations to greed and monetary aspirations overshadowing the focus on the eternal, as well as the worries of life choking out fruitfulness.

Weeds are terribly tenacious, life-sucking organisms. I've discovered that 'fun' truth first-hand in my last several months of working as an 'external beautification specialist.' I'm not sure how many hours I've spent on my hands and knees, pulling weed after weed after weed after weed out of a flower bed or tree box. We have one particular kind of weed that has taken over whole sections of our lawns. There is no sign of the healthy fescue grass that we planted last year. And it seems that repeated applications of herbicide haven't won the battle...yet.

And weeding/spraying is not a 'one and done' process. My coworkers and I can make a given flower bed look great, pulling out the weeds (properly- roots and all), only to come back days later and have to do it all over again. We can spray several times a season, only to have the little (insert plural censored descriptor) come back with a vengeance.

I think, taking this illustration back full circle, 'heady' can be exchanged for 'weedy' as a description of my last year or so. I've felt a lot of joy and peace strangled out of my life and relationships by the weeds of worry and anxiety. And while I find days of reprieve and the ability to 'breathe' again, I feel like I'm living in a perpetual choke hold these days.

So... I'm searching for the spiritual equivalent of Round-up. I'm finding that worship is part of that solution. I've been saved, time and again, as I digest what I'm playing/reading/singing.

And like the real-life stuff, I know that 'weeding' my mind and heart are not one-and-done activities.
At least I think I know that...

Maybe that's part of my problem- I need to be a little more regular about cleaning house and eradicating the 'weeds.' And weeds can have some deep roots. This is going to be a long process.

Why are these things so much easier to write about...


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Another blog from my current life...for another day... pruning and John 15