Weeds

There are so many wonderful lessons in the world all around us.  Lately I have been inspired by the grandeur of the planets in their orbit, the power of the weather, the wonder of the seasons changing.  It really is amazing and it all remind me of the marvelous plan that our loving Heavenly Father has for us.  There is so much that is outside our control.  We may not understand the moving of the planets or what to do with too much rain, but I marvel at the lessons we can learn from nature.

One such lesson that I seem to be learning over and over again this spring has to do with weeds!  :)  It's kind of fun to have, for the first time, my own small yard to take care.  When I moved into my new house I inherited a small yard full of completely unruly weeds.  It took me two or three full Saturdays to get it looking like this...

I was pretty proud of myself in getting it to look this good.  Fortunately just a few weeks later there began to be enough cold weather and eventually snow that I didn't have to think too much about my yard again (the blessings of winter!) until sometime in March when my mom pointed out that the yard was completely full of dandelions.  ;)  What!?  They weren't supposed to come back!  And so I spent another few hours getting rid of all the weeds again.  What to my surprise and dismay, but just a week later they were back, and even a few different varieties.

This little experiment / frustration got me thinking and learning and pondering....if you don't want the weeds to come back you have to fill that space in with something else!!  ;)  Problem is I haven't decided what I want to fill the space in with?  flowers?  vegetables?  grass?  bark?  stepping stones?  It takes me a long time to make a decision and the creativity that gardening involves is not a talent I've been blessed with or worked to develop yet.  But, every week that I don't decide what to the plant or do with the space the weeds come back and think they own the place.  They kind of do.

I think there is an important life lesson in this - whether it's our time or our thoughts or anything else... If we don't decide what we want to do with our time or if we don't fill our minds with good thoughts the weeds come back and take over!  So, we must intentionally fill our lives with GOOD so that there is no room for the bad and ugly and distracting weeds!