As I sat in the middle of the garden on my big rock, I mentally thought over the coming week’s schedule to see when I could put some time in pulling those weeds. No day seemed appropriate. I came to the conclusion that I would have to make time. Maybe I could conquer it in smaller blocks of time each day.
Satisfied with the solution, my mind wandered over the day’s events. The cool of the evening seemed to soothe my tired heart. It had been a trying day. The children seemed to be sprouting weeds in their lives too, and I was just too tired to weed all of them all at once. I heaved a heavy sigh as my twenty-month-old son upstairs started crying again. I could hear his protests through the bathroom window. We are teaching him to go to bed without apple juice in a bottle, and he thinks the world is coming to an end. He doesn’t want "waadoo" (water). After my husband settled the dispute, he settled down again to sleep.
The Lord spoke gently to my heart as I listened, weeding my carrots. He reminded me of all the times I had wandered off the beaten path, and how my mother and father had carefully pulled the weeds in my life. They had not pulled all of them at once, but here, there, only as they appeared. I finished the carrots and moved on to the onions. The carrot bed looked good, but I knew that without consistent weeding, those weeds would be back!
And so it is in my children’s lives. I pull weeds in one area, clean it out and move on to the next. All the while, I must keep up on the area I just weeded to keep it weed-free. How can I do a good job weeding in my children’s lives? How will I know that the job I am doing will be sufficient for healthy growth?
I know that if I had been consistent in weeding the garden, it would not be in the state it is in now. Instead I grew lazy and pushed the task off to another day. Perhaps if I was consistent in weeding the wrong in my children’s lives, they, too, would be healthy, strong, and bear good fruit. I resolved in my heart to try again tomorrow with a fresh outlook and to be consistent in the discipline of my children. The weeds are pulled one by one, not all at once. Weeding is work, there is no doubt about that…
With the Lord’s help, we can do all the things he asks.
