Before we moved to the house we are in now, we had a large veggie patch, herb garden and chooks. And we loved it. Every twilight was spent pottering in the garden, each weekend we would make renovations to the chook house, my husband and I often laughing that their house received more attention than ours!

The house we are in now, while we love it, does not have a great spot for a veggie patch, or chooks, so we have not really much of a garden to play around with. One day, we tell ourselves, we will have more finances to make what is currently unusable, usable. And more time to do it, too.

What we do have – some herbs, various roses and other plants – is often sadly neglected as we are also much busier now (owning your own business will do that to your life!) and have significant health issues that we didn’t have a few years ago.

Yesterday, though, we bought some new herbs which obviously needed planting, so we were out and about pottering in the garden.

Because I am not out there much, there was a definite increase in weeds. Everywhere. As I pulled the nasty things out, I reprimanded myself for letting it get to the state it was in. If you just come out for half an hour each day, or even every couple of days, you wouldn’t have this situation, I told myself. What beauty there is out here, is being marred by these unsightly weeds, that if I just stayed on top of, wouldn’t be such an issue. Going outside and seeing areas that are totally overrun with weeds can be overwhelming and something I am then tempted to put off. Whereas, if I just do a little each day, the task doesn’t seem anywhere near as daunting.

As I continued to tug the weeds out, I reflected on how like life gardening is, not a new analogy, I know, but it really hit me afresh.

If I tended to those things within me that are unsightly with regularity, the task is cut down considerably. Conversely, if I continue in bad habits and attitudes, any good there is in me and my character can easily be overshadowed. And the task to ‘weed’ my life becomes that much more difficult.

We also know that weeds grow prolifically without us planting them, needing no encouragement from us to thrive. On the other hand, the roses, the herbs, the plants, require intentionality and nuturing. Just like our good and bad character traits.

We need to keep short accounts with ourselves and not let the weeds get out of control. Sometimes, it’s hard for others to see our beauty when the weeds are in abundance and taking over.

Do you need to do some weeding in your life? I know I do.