Weeding...

No, this is not a blog about gardening. Anyone who knows me well knows I SUCK at gardening. I try. I really do. I absolutely love getting outside when it's not too hot and digging around in the dirt. I love to see a beautiful landscaped yard and over the years I have gotten better with my attempts to grow something outside my womb! I've done well with azaleas, bogonias, impatiens, hostas and anything that doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Houseplants, if they are lucky, can survive up to a year if they are very hearty. But most living things...if it doesn't bark or cry, I forget about it. It's not my gift and that's okay. I have other gifts.

But one thing I did learn from my few feeble attempts at gardening was that for beautiful things to grow, you have to remove the bad things. Weeds. The creep up in the middle of something nice and wonderful, suck all the oxygen and nutrients, grow bigger and bigger until it finally kills off the pretty stuff and leaves something big and ugly that you never wanted growing in the first place. That is unless you pluck it out! And sometimes you have to keep plucking the weeds time and time again.

I have found this to be true with friendships and dating as well. The only problem is that with this type of weeding it's sometimes difficult to tell the weeds from the flowers. Some weeds can be very attractive. And you think that you want the weed to grow. So you spend time caring for the weed and neglecting the flowers. Then you find out that the weed wasn't so lovely after all but by the time you find this out it's REALLY huge and can be hard to get rid of. Or either it's multiplied and there are a LOT of them. Either way, the flowers have been neglected and now you have to spend a LOT of time and energy nurturing them back to health.

If you're lucky, the flowers you had are hearty enough to survive you having played with the weeds for so long and they will forgive you and let you nurture them back. Sometimes not. At any rate, I have had to do some weeding this week.

Too many facebook friends, too much time spent worrying about what people I barely know think or getting aggravated because they don't get me. Too much time put into wanting to be with men that just won't ever be any significant part of my life. I don't put the blame on these weeds. Some of the weeds were very upfront about the kind of attention they were looking for and I was okay with it for awhile. Or maybe we thought we were on the same page about things but it turns out for whatever reason, we have different ideas about what certain things mean.

Regardless it's time to start putting the FLOWERS first again. My most important flower right now is my relationship with the Lord and spiritual growth. I have a LOT of studying to do and I am very excited about the two small groups I have joined for the Fall. I realize we as human beings need the fellowship of like minded people but like I mentioned before, we have to be careful about letting too many people in. But I'm not approaching the groups as a means of finding new friends. If that happens great but that's not my main focus. I'm hoping to learn so that I can be a better friend to the ones I already have. I want to be a better Christian, a woman whose heart belongs completely to God.

My second flower that needs some attention is me. Although I still feel young in my heart and act young most of the time, I have to admit, my body is starting to betray me in some ways. It's time to focus more of my attention on my health. I need to take care of myself so that I can take care of others the way I want and need to.

Then there are my three most important flowers: my children. Though they aren't babies anymore, they still need me and I still have a need and a desire to mother them. These are some very important years and I already know from Dylan that they FLY by. I'm excited about the decisions and choices that they have to make and I want to be around and be an important part of their making them.

And my true friends. My wonderful, absolutely amazing REAL friends. Dede, Tammy, Anji, Angela and now Lara. They are always in my corner no matter what and I love them dearly. I love their honesty, their wisdom, their kindness. I love hanging out and having fun with them. They teach me so much without even realizing it and I love that they get me and accept me for how I am--nerdy, goofy, harsh at times, bold and brazen, but always full of love for them.

Sometimes we don't make the conscious choice to weed out the negativity and bad things from our lives. Sometimes God has to start the process for us until we realize what He's doing and jump in and do our part to get the tedious job done. It's not always fun. But it is always worth it!

Happy Gardening!