Weeding the Garden

  As I went to bed tonight and laid there next to my husband my mind would not shut off so I decided to come down to my computer and write. Often through out my day as I am working or doing something around the house my mind creates analogies, life lessons that are related to what ever task I am doing at the time. The most recent one was when I was weeding in my garden.
   In our backyard we have a rather large garden. When we first moved into our home their was no garden, only grass, not cool. So we decided to make a place to plant fruits and vegetables to store for the winter. It was hard work to make a spot to grow things in, but once it was made I was so excited to plant all the seeds I had bought at the store. I planted everything in one day and I was so excited to see everything grow. When I would water the garden I would pick the few little weeds that were sprouting. It wasn't long till things started really to grow, but the things that were growing weren't the things I wanted to grow, WEEDS!!! Weeds had invaded my precious garden, filling each row with green choking vines of death!! I was not to be deterred so I began to weed. Row, after row, after row, after row I weeded, Peder weeded, and we even convinced a friend to help weed. It seemed no matter our efforts to dig these weeds out they just kept coming back! Because of the large effort we had put into weeding we decided to take a few days off, but no sooner had I turned my back that the weeds seemed to multiply by millions!
   I couldn't stand looking at my garden because I could feel the plants being suffocated by the morning glory that had taken up residency in each row. They had come from the "grass" of our yard. I say "grass" because our yard consists of 90% weeds. So I guess it is no surprise that our garden had been over run by these evil villains. Looking at this tragic situation I decided to take control and spent  several hours each day pulling weeds, determined to never allow my garden to get that bad again. I was only successful for a few days till I grew weary of weeding, but it was during this time I realized that gardening is just like our lives.
  Each one of us has planted a garden full of precious things and we have to choose wether or not we are going to weed our garden of unholy things. We can choose to weed our garden from the bad TV shows we watch, the movies that drive the spirit from our presence, the unkind words or thoughts we say or think, the hurtful acts we commit, and many other things. These weeds of life creep in unnoticed and if unchecked can over take our sacred garden. Many days it seems easier to just let these weeds in, allowing them to grow deep roots in our precious soil, but we must make the choice to rid ourselves of these unwelcome visitors. If left unchecked the weeds of life can completely over run our garden and when we do decide to weed our lives of what we thing are the weed we can unknowingly pluck out the precious little seed we had so painstakingly planted long ago.
     Many times we will fall short of a weedless garden, in fact it will happen often, but we are given the blessing of help from the master gardener that lifts us and helps us pull the weeds that at first seemed impossible to get rid of and he also helps us discern between the weeds and the plants we desire to grow. However, the master gardener only comes when he is invited and only helps when he is asked. It is our choice to allow him to assistance in this difficult task, but we will never regret allowing him in. The only true regret comes from keeping him from helping. We may think that we are perfectly capable of weeding on our own, or maybe we are just blind to the weeds in our garden. Its at these times we need to realize every garden has weeds that cannot be pulled alone, every garden is full of weeds that must be removed. We are the garden and what we do with our garden determines how our life plays out. We make the choice......no one can make it for us.......