So today I weeded the area in our front yard by the mail box. (For those of you who know me, I can't answer your question. I don't know who I am or what I did with Kelli....) I usually ignore that area of the yard when I do my infrequent weedings. As a result, it was pretty bad. Some of the weeds have been there the whole time we've been in this house.
Anyway, I learned a few things this morning. 1) When your four-year-old tells you that you really should put on shoes and gloves before doing that, you should listen. 2) Just because weeds look dead doesn't mean they want to come out of the ground. 3) Vines are evil and interconnect everything, making it hard to pull anything up. 4) Just because some weeds are easier to pull, doesn't mean they are the ones that need to come out most.
1) I don't normally wear shoes. I have nothing against them, I just prefer to be sock-footed. Normally when I do yard work in the front yard, I remain sock-footed. But I also haven't ever weeded that area by the mailbox. I discovered something about that area. It is the motherland of thorns. You know the prickly ones that look like misshapen thumbtacks and stick to you from four areas at once? I reached in to what looked like just some normal weeds to discover that thorn patch hiding underneath. I said, "OW!" and pulled a thorn from my hand.
Anna told me that maybe I should go get my mittens. I responded that I didn't know where the gloves were. This is true, however the main reason I didn't go look is that I just don't like gloves. If I'm afraid of getting bit by a spider, I'll wear them. Otherwise, I suck it up without. Instead of getting gloves, I just moved to a different area. I had already gotten the visible weeds in that area with the first pull anyway.
My kids went in and got their shoes on. Anna told me I needed mine on, too. I told her I was just going to walk around the edges where it wouldn't hurt my feet. And that worked for a while, too. You know, until I forgot about the above-mentioned thorn patch and walked through it sock-footed. OUCH! At that point, I had Anna go get my shoes for me.
2) The first bunch of weeds I pulled was dead, making them extremely easy to pull. This gave me false confidence, as I expected all the weeds to come up easily. I soon found that just because the tops were dead, didn't mean that the roots were...
3) I have no clue what the vine was, but it was under the bush and tied EVERYTHING together. That area took me forever, even though there weren't that many weeds needing to come out.
4) Right next to the mail box was a big dead sage brush looking thing. It was HUGE- could have been a small bush. It was also thorny. The stalk going into the ground was really thick, and my first attempt to yank it out was fruitless. So I decided to do all the other weeds and just leave that one. As I kept going, I kept chastising myself for that decision. After all, if I pulled that one huge weed and nothing else it would make the yard look nicer than if I pulled everything BUT the one weed. Finally, I got up the courage to get the big weed. I reached in, yanked as hard as I could, got it up, and even got it in the garbage can in time to let the truck take it. I also came out covered in thorns and prickles all up my arm. That was fun picking them out. But I was right. It made the yard look worlds nicer.
As I weeded, I kept thinking how my weeding was like repentance and the weeds were like sin and temptation. We may resist putting on gloves or shoes, but in the end, we get stuck with thorns, no matter how we try to avoid anything painful. We can't go through life without putting on the armor of God and expect not to get stuck with painful sin/temptation. How do we put on the armor? Very simple. We pray. We read our scriptures. We attend our church meetings. We do all other things we've been asked to do and keep the spirit in our lives. Yes, they are extra steps. But are they really any harder than putting on our shoes?
We may think that sins are going to be easy to repent of because they are old. But we will find that all sin has root somewhere. The root is usually very hard to pull without help. We need to remember the Atonement. If we only pull the tops that look dead- or only the easily removed sin, we leave the roots and the sin will appear again. It is only if we get the root that the weed doesn't come back.
We may think sins are isolated, but usually they are not. Pride leads to unkindness. Anger leads to harsh words. Etc. We have to rid ourselves of sin one sin at a time, but we need to expect the interconnected nature. Look deep- if you find the main vine and pull IT, other things will come with it.
It is often easiest to work on ridding ourselves of small sins that will come easily and be easy not to repeat. But they are often not the things that are keeping us most from the Lord. Sometimes we need to pull the big, painful things from our lives first. The process is painful and hurts in many places, but the end result is a much more beautiful soul than if we tried to leave it. Sometimes these big weeds need shovels- maybe we need to seek help from our bishop or elsewhere to get rid of it. But in the end, the larger the weed we pull, the better our souls look.
These were just my thoughts. :)
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