I started a garden this year, because my friend Beth said I should.  I was a little bit worried that I would just kill everything and waste my time (which is still a distinct possibility), but she believed in me and so I did it.

Sweat poured as I dug up the ground, mud splattered my feet when I watered, my finger tips felt the grit of the dirt as it caught under my nails when I dug in the plants.

I have to be honest, it all felt way more spiritual than I had planned. I kind of fell in love with my tiny little garden.

Then the rain came. It poured and poured. I still feel sure it was Heaven’s blessing me because God knew I was going to need a leg up this first year. Every day I would peek in my little garden and the leaves would be bigger and bigger.

A few weeks in my husband looked me in the eye and said, ”Go weed your garden. If you don’t take care of it now it your plants will have to compete to hard to produce any fruit.”

So I did it.

And it rained some more.  More big fluffy leaves.

“Kaylie, you need to go weed your garden again, you have to stay on top of it or it will take over.”

So back out I went. After a few reminders I realized this is not a once and done thing. This weeding out job is a continual process.

The competition has to be done away with so that the plants can focus on their real job: producing fruit.

See, I told you gardening was spiritual.

Y’all, we have so many weeds in our garden. So many competitors to our producing fruit in our lives. We have this mess of sin, these abundance of distractions, we have harms coming at us from every direction.

We have to weed our gardens.

We have to get low on our knees every single morning and weed our garden.

Repent of our sin.

Clear out the competition.

Pluck up the damaging roots.

So as we go on today let’s ask ourselves what our weeds are. Is it material stuff? Maybe we are so busy maintaining and managing our stuff that we find ourselves frustrated with our kids over it. Is it time drainers? Maybe we have packed our schedule so tight with :”good” things that we fall exhausted at the end of the day with no time for the really good relationships in our lives.  Is it mental and emotional baggage that we have been lugging around? Maybe we have been feeling those hurts too long and we need to forgive. We need to surrender.

We need to weed out garden.

Daily.

Would you join me today? Let’s get on our knees and ask God where we need to be producing fruit and what is competing with that. Let’s ask Him to show us His path today. His stuff, His time, His  thoughts and feelings. Today let’s bloom in His garden.

To Connect With Kaylie and Read More Of Her Posts.

I like to share about all the glory that God shows me over at my blog kayliehodges.com. I write about faith, family, and funnies. I love to listen to stories, and tell tales of the beauty from ashes that is adoption, and often motherhood in general. I am currently working on a book about sharing lives and sharing faith!

http://kayliehodges.com/2014/08/09/just-a-little-perspective/

http://kayliehodges.com/2014/11/14/when-your-theology-doesnt-match-your-reality/

http://kayliehodges.com/2014/03/21/travel-otherness-and-our-kids/

http://kayliehodges.com/2015/01/21/going-rouge/

http://kayliehodges.com/2012/04/26/keeping-it-real-mean-girls/

http://kayliehodges.com/2014/12/31/911-panic/