work

Today I was outside pulling weeds.

Truth: I hate pulling weeds.
I actually hate anything having to do with gardening or tending to the lawn.
Even gardening gloves annoy me.
(Mainly because I have child-sized hands.
So when I use them, it’s like trying to pull weeds using an oven mit.)

I would rather clean toilets than be outside doing yard work of any kind.

And we have weeds.
SO many of them!

Some insane person decided to put decorative rocks all around our yard.
Like all over in random spots.
There are a lot of rocks.
(Fairly certain they did that to torment me….)

Every year it is the same.

By the time spring comes, there are so many weeds that it seems like a hopeless task to get them all.

So I spray.
Spray some more…
I pull weeds for days.

Then I forget about them for quite a while until all of a sudden I look outside and they are overwhelming again.

Not the best strategy.
But, you know…

As I was outside, I started thinking about relationships.
They take work.
Lots of work.
And if we neglect them for long, weeds can grow in and take over the beauty.

Bitterness can fester.
People can drift apart.
Without even realizing it.
Until you look up and realize how much has come between you.
How much ugliness you have let inside.

I do really love my people.

But sometimes life and circumstances prevent me from tending to the relationship.
Sometimes I look up and see there is a whole lot there that has been neglected.
And the task of restoring the relationship can seem overwhelming.
It can seem hopeless.

If we put priority into consistently pouring into the relationships in our lives, we would be so much better off.

I think of my yard.
If I was out there on a consistent basis, it wouldn’t ever get to be overwhelming.
I would have to be out there a lot though, let’s be real.
(Ugh! Dumb rocks!!)

Relationships of any kind take work.
Marriages take work.
Friendships take work.
Parent-child relationships take work.

Sometimes the work is tedious.
Sometimes the work is no fun.

And in a society that so quickly disposes of relationships that are no longer ‘working.’
I wonder what would happen if we started actually ‘working’ at those relationships instead of disposing of them.

Now, I am not naive enough to think that every relationship can or should be spared.
But I believe some are suffering simply because of lack of trying.
Lack of work.

Because let’s be truthful, if I never went out and tended to my yard,
No one would want to live here.