This past weekend I was weeding our flower beds. The ones that seem to go on forever and ever when you are trying to pluck strong rooted weeds out from between the flowers.
It is such a boring, time consuming chore that I seriously contemplated getting out the rototiller and doing away with all the flowers in favor of something more maintenance friendly, like concrete.
As I was kneeling there mulling over the million other things I could be doing it struck me how much weeding is a metaphor for parenting.
You have these flowers that you really love. You tend to them. Give them water. Anxiously wring your hands hoping that they bloom like the ones you saw in your neighbors yard.
You wonder if you are doing it correctly, or will you end up with garden of dirt that all you neighbors will shake their heads at while they drive by, whispering.
And you sit and weed and pull out the damaging weeds like, excelsior selfishness , magnus greediness, or rannuculus ungratefulness whose roots are so long and strong they threaten to harm your little flowers. Or the weeds that aren’t as strong, but spread everywhere like a virus, like the populus backtalkus.
Some days it feels like all you do is weed. That all you do it pluck the little bad behavior weeds. They keep sprouting up in spite of your best attempts at eradicating them. You think you must have missed a root somewhere, but where? You weed, and weed, and weed some more. You wonder if you are being overzealous with your weeding. Are you accidentally pulling things out that should remain?
It feels overwhelming. There are times when you feel like just giving up.
The one day this happens:
You realize that all the teaching, discipline, and weeding out of negative behaviors has been worth it. They are blooming.
