Peace In The Promise

So my family recently moved house (yay!) and we have some grass covered areas at the back and front of our property.

Not long after we had moved, I had a constant tug on my heart to go out into the backyard and pull out the weeds that I had seen. I kept putting it off, making excuses along the lines of “It’s too hot”,  “I’m too tired” and, well “…I just don’t feel like it”.

Today, my son kept pulling me to go out the back with him, so I eventually caved in. As he played, the weeds stuck out to me like a sore thumb and I just couldn’t take it anymore! I began pulling them out of the ground with my bare hands as I could no longer stand the sight of them.

As I began pulling out the weeds, God began ministering to my heart about something that I had shared on my Instagram a few weeks ago: the importance of “getting to the root of it”. There is a root to every action and reaction. Many of the feelings, actions and reactions that we have developed come from the weed seedlings that have taken root at some point in our lives and grown in our hearts.

Growing up, I remember gardening with my parents, and trying to do a quick job of pulling out the weeds (so I could go back inside 😂). I remember them growing frustrated at times, as they would see the roots of the weeds still remaining in the ground, and they knew that, if the roots still remained, the problem had not truly been eliminated. They then showed me the correct weed removal technique and directed me to the right tools, teaching me how to effectively use them to remove even the most difficult of weeds, roots and all (I still hated gardening though 😂😅🤷🏾‍♀️) .

The thing with weeds is, if you do not uproot them early, they only grow stronger, taller, broader, deeper, and become more difficult to remove. If you try to superficially uproot them, and make the mistake of still leaving a portion of the root behind (like me as a child), it will grow back (looks like those childhood gardening lessons have not gone to waste…thanks mum and dad!).

The same goes for us. Sometimes, we dance around our pain, trauma, and issues, covering them up like concealer on dark under eye circles (hello 🙋🏾‍♀️), and not fully addressing and uprooting the deeper issue at hand. These deeply rooted weeds that we have require a special gardener to remove them: Jesus. He directs us to the scriptures that, in a sense, act like the weed removing tools, as they help us to combat these pesky weeds.

It is important to note that it took me getting close to the weeds for me to become bothered enough by them to action their removal. As long as I avoided the back yard, I didn’t have to think about the weeds, but this did not mean that the weeds weren’t there. They were there alright, growing stronger each day, multiplying and consuming the fresh grass shoots that were beginning to break through the soil (🙄😒).

In order to effectively remove the weeds from our hearts, we cannot fear facing them. Too often we fear to ask God to reveal our hearts to us, as we know deep down that we may discover something that we don’t want to be true. For example, we don’t want to acknowledge that the real reason our friendships are not fulfilling our needs is because we have been placing our security and hope in them and not God. We don’t want to acknowledge that the reason that we keep getting into unhealthy relationships is because we have a habit of trying to use man to fix our insecurities, such as our fear of loneliness, so we are willing to accept whomever is available at the time, rather than sitting at God’s feet and allowing him to heal us completely. Or perhaps it is that we don’t want to acknowledge that maybe it isn’t always just everyone else that is the problem, but perhaps it is in fact us that have some deeply rooted weeds of insecurity, anger, unforgiveness, distrust, self hatred and more that need to be addressed and uprooted so that we do not continue to operate with toxic patterns of behaviour, negatively impacting us, and those around us (phew, that was a heavy paragraph y’all, feel free to grab a glass of water to help that go down 😅🙋🏾‍♀️).

Seeds are often carried through the wind, the water, and by animals, but they can also be carried underfoot, meaning, if you travel somewhere that has particular plants, you can carry the seeds of this plant under your shoes unknowingly into your backyard. So, I ask you this: Where are you visiting that is causing you to plant (or perhaps replant) the harmful weeds that God is trying to remove from you?

Peace!