I hate bugs. And there are always a lot of bugs in the weeds. Last time I pulled weeds, I accidentally stepped on an ant bed and by the time the tickling feeling registered, there were 200 ants scurrying up my leg. MY WORST NIGHTMARE.
(Seriously. My recurring nightmares as a child included being chased by giant bugs and falling down an elevator shaft. Fortunately, I've overcome the fear of elevators. Bugs....not so much.)
In fact, last night I rolled over in bed and my hand fell on something small and squishy. I totally panicked and went into secret spy mode and built a pillow wall in between R and I so I wouldn't interrupt his deep (snoring) sleep while I whipped out the flashlight and shined it on the perpetrator.
No worries. It was just a craisin.
Obviously, R was very relieved when I told him the next morning that I had saved him from the killer craisin.
So, back to the real focus of this post. (Sometimes I have issues with focus.) So last Saturday, there I am pulling weeds out of our shrubs, angry at the stupid things for how difficult they are to pull up, mad at myself for letting them get so out of control, and huffing and puffing about how much I hate them.
"You see how much you hate those weeds. Imagine what it's like for Me when I have to keep cleaning up the weeds in your life over and over and over. I hate your weeds and I wish you would stop letting them grow in your life."
Well, Lord, I've never though of it quite like that before.
So, here's what I now know about weeds:
- It's MUCH easier to just prune them out little by little. If you see one growing, pull it. Don't wait until it multiplies and covers the whole flower bed.
- Some weeds grow so fast and so big, that sometimes you don't even notice that they're there. They just blend in with the rest of the shrubs. One of the weeds in our flower bed wasn't even there a few weeks ago. Yesterday, it was as tall as the shrubs we've been growing for years.I honestly didn't even notice it at first because it just blended in with those bushes. The scary thing was how big the root and "trunk" were after a couple of weeks - it was the diameter of a paper towel tube. Weeds can grow fast and STRONG.
- Be alert. Weeds can camouflage themselves, so that it's hard to tell the difference between the good plants and the weeds. (Our yard is an excellent example. Hopefully, in the near future we will be re-seeding our grass, so that this is less of an issue.)
- As much as I hate weeding, God hates weeding the garden of my life even more.
