So we bought a house. We = the amazing man I married and myself. I sort of (obviously) abandoned this blog spot a while ago. I'm not really sure what or what happened, but for the sake of avoiding unnecessary dramatics, let's just assume it was for a very dull reason. This little diddy felt inspired, and so I'm deciding to log it somehow. At one time I got overwhelmed with the thought of trying to chronicle every significant moment/thought/musing, which made the thought of writing one simple post all the more uninteresting. Maybe that's why I've neglected this page. Nonetheless, here I am, living in acceptance that there's no need to obsess about capturing every profound moment, trusting that there is One who holds all of my special moments, and that when time and space permit I'm going to jot them down because it's fun. It's a rhythm of health for me I think.
Back to the original thought - we bought a house. One of the things I'm becoming very acquainted with is weeds. Weeds in the existing garden beds, weeds in cracks between the sidewalks, weeds in the gravel driveway. I'm not sure I considered weeds as a part of homeownership when we signed on all of the dotted lines. I have been looking forward to this weekend as I feel like we have not had a free weekend for the past 8 weeks, and wanted to do absolutely nothing today except maybe binge watch shows that John wouldn't understand (i.e. Sister Wives). However I decided to hunt and kill weeds this afternoon.
As I was crouching and bending over, aware that passing cars were getting a nice view of my rear end pointed directly at the sky, I started to have some thoughts about the various kids of weeds I was affectionately calling "little b****es." My self talk went something like this: "Remember when you and your clients would talk about their naughty behaviors like weeds? And how you can't just mow over weeds, you actually have to dig them up from the roots? And how they didn't really get what you were saying? Maybe you should have taken them to some actual weeds and given them a lawnmower. That would have been cool. Oh hey you're not really pulling the weeds out from the roots, you're just pulling the ugly leaves off. You know those little weed roots you're leaving in the ground are just going to sprout up again, like, tomorrow." Because guess what, weeds are annoying and it's so much easier to cheat.... at first. Cheat. And then I started thinking about sin. My sin. The sin of the world. I started to think about how all my experiences within 30 minutes of weeding related in some way to sin.
I think the Lord wants me to know that my thoughts that feel special are really not my special thoughts, they are His sweet, tender words being whispered to me in something as mundane as weeding. I'm pretty sure this is the case because pretty immediately I had the thought of, "this isn't a new concept - I'd imagine that gardeners from every time and place have had the same idea." I imagined people weeding and having a shared experience of God teaching them about sin via weeds while crouching low in their gardens, fields, gravel driveways.
I wore a pair of gloves because some of the weeds are stupid and have dumb thorny things on them which makes it harder to get my hands on them and pull them out. And if they get on my skin, it itches. Some sin is like that. It is so gnarly that I don't even want to get close to it. I'd rather let the roots get deeper, convincing myself that I don't really care about how it looks, and other people have them too, and it's just not worth how it's going to feel to really get after it.
Some weeds come out really easily, especially if I isolated them from the gravel or other plants that had started to grow over them. The roots were shallow and loose, just maybe a little hidden. Some sins are like that. Fairly clean removal once we've defined the parameters. Quick gratification when they are uprooted. And yet annoying because they seem to be the most pervasive, less constrained or held in one compartment or another, but all over, everywhere you look.
A couple weeks ago John pointed out a weed that I determined was not a weed. And then a week later I decided I agreed with his diagnosis, and had twice the work to remove them than if I had considered his perspective in the beginning. This is all a too familiar parallel to marriage, as I am discovering. Don't get married unless you are ready for someone to point out all of your weeds, especially the ones you've convinced yourself are not weeds.
What about working the analogy the other way? Starting with how we deal with sin and applying that to weeds in our yards? What if someone actually started to consciously, willingly, deliberately plant weeds? What if I went and found a weed somewhere, brought it home to plant, looked over at John and said, "No, honey, I got it. Trust me. We want these weeds here." And what if I tried to then protect the weeds and make sure no one (John) tried to get rid of them? I'm open to some pretty off the wall things, but this would be legitimately dumb, and borderline crazy. Who would KNOWINGLY plan actual weeds on their property? A fool.
So why then do we plant our sin, try to tell God we've got it under control, and protect it from Him? Because we do. God becomes a threat to our sin. The thought of actually watching someone plant a weed in their yard stirs up what feels like panic and urgency. "Get that thing out of here. Get it off your lawn. Oh my gosh. You're going to plant it. Do you know how much work that is going to be when you come to your senses and the roots have gotten deeper and grabbed more earth and are more an actual part of your yard?"
I kid you not, last week John and I were weeding and I was so over it that I told myself, "I'll just wait until these little weeds get bigger. Then they will be easier to pull." Not really a big deal when it comes to weeds, but what about the sins that seem small that I avoid? That's essentially what I'm saying when I neglect to address them in the moment. "Eh, it's ok that I was just really critical of my husband... I'll just wait to deal with it when it's a BIGGER issue and more obviously a problem." Yikes. No. Hell no. Let me be present enough and wise enough to pull those baby weeds out when I see them. When John sees them. Let me have the foresight to address things when they are still small, shallow-rooted, and can be dealt with in one single pluck from loose dirt.
It is probably one of the most exhausting and distasteful things, having your sin exposed all the time, knowing there are so many weeds to pull, driveways to maintain. This afternoon when I decided I was done for the time being, I felt like God was saying, "yeah, time to be done. Get inside and rest. You can only do so much weeding in an afternoon. Just like your sin too, Leigh Anne. Don't deny that it's there, and also let go of trying to deal with every single blemish and imperfection. You're human. You're not going to be able to do it. This is a yard. There are weeds. The goal is perfection. It's not even about a goal. It's about doing what you can, and accepting that it's never going to be perfect."
It gets harder to relax into this rhythm when we ignore/deny/hide sin and the roots get deeper and stronger. But if we are letting God reveal our sin to us, and surrendering it to Him as it comes, we get to rest in His grace, knowing that as long as we are tuned into him and giving Him full access to ourselves, we are good. We can rest. We can let it be what it is. He knows our frame. He knows the weeds are just a part of living this side of Eden's walls.
And that's it. Time for Sister Wives.
What about working the analogy the other way? Starting with how we deal with sin and applying that to weeds in our yards? What if someone actually started to consciously, willingly, deliberately plant weeds? What if I went and found a weed somewhere, brought it home to plant, looked over at John and said, "No, honey, I got it. Trust me. We want these weeds here." And what if I tried to then protect the weeds and make sure no one (John) tried to get rid of them? I'm open to some pretty off the wall things, but this would be legitimately dumb, and borderline crazy. Who would KNOWINGLY plan actual weeds on their property? A fool.
So why then do we plant our sin, try to tell God we've got it under control, and protect it from Him? Because we do. God becomes a threat to our sin. The thought of actually watching someone plant a weed in their yard stirs up what feels like panic and urgency. "Get that thing out of here. Get it off your lawn. Oh my gosh. You're going to plant it. Do you know how much work that is going to be when you come to your senses and the roots have gotten deeper and grabbed more earth and are more an actual part of your yard?"
I kid you not, last week John and I were weeding and I was so over it that I told myself, "I'll just wait until these little weeds get bigger. Then they will be easier to pull." Not really a big deal when it comes to weeds, but what about the sins that seem small that I avoid? That's essentially what I'm saying when I neglect to address them in the moment. "Eh, it's ok that I was just really critical of my husband... I'll just wait to deal with it when it's a BIGGER issue and more obviously a problem." Yikes. No. Hell no. Let me be present enough and wise enough to pull those baby weeds out when I see them. When John sees them. Let me have the foresight to address things when they are still small, shallow-rooted, and can be dealt with in one single pluck from loose dirt.
It is probably one of the most exhausting and distasteful things, having your sin exposed all the time, knowing there are so many weeds to pull, driveways to maintain. This afternoon when I decided I was done for the time being, I felt like God was saying, "yeah, time to be done. Get inside and rest. You can only do so much weeding in an afternoon. Just like your sin too, Leigh Anne. Don't deny that it's there, and also let go of trying to deal with every single blemish and imperfection. You're human. You're not going to be able to do it. This is a yard. There are weeds. The goal is perfection. It's not even about a goal. It's about doing what you can, and accepting that it's never going to be perfect."
It gets harder to relax into this rhythm when we ignore/deny/hide sin and the roots get deeper and stronger. But if we are letting God reveal our sin to us, and surrendering it to Him as it comes, we get to rest in His grace, knowing that as long as we are tuned into him and giving Him full access to ourselves, we are good. We can rest. We can let it be what it is. He knows our frame. He knows the weeds are just a part of living this side of Eden's walls.
And that's it. Time for Sister Wives.
