Weeding.

I spent a fair amount of time weeding this summer. We bought a house last winter and it came with some land – not a ton of land, it’s not like we have acreage and are modern-day land barons, but the house has some land around it. And that land came with weeds. And darn it all if those weeds don’t like to grow. And grow. And grow.

And grow.

So. I weeded.

And here is how it happened. I pulled up the weeds. Roots and all, ’cause that is the way my folks taught me to weed. You get all the way down into the dirt and you dig around the weed and you pull up the whole thing. And then you do that over and over with the other weeds. And I did. For many many hours.

And at the end of those many hours I had a really nice looking patch of weedless dirt. Ha.

But then over time, sometimes days, sometimes weeks, sometimes what seemed like hours, the weeds came back. And the dirt was not clean anymore and the patch of land looked a heck of a lot like it did before I started.

So here’s what I have been thinking about while I have been pulling up more weeds. In life we sometimes make huge, monumental, life-changing efforts to clear away “the weeds” or the bad stuff or the unhealthy habits. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. And that is all good. Because at the end we often have a fresh slate or a clean start or a place to begin again from. A clean patch of dirt.

But just like the weeds – if we don’t take the time to figure out what we’re going to do on the other side of that huge effort. If we don’t figure out how we’re going to fill it in or cover or change that patch of dirt – the weeds will grow back.

So if I were my own best friend and I were setting out to make a really big change in my life I would try to remind myself to think beyond that change and have a plan for what comes next.

Right now – my plan involves bark dust and maybe for the winter just being alright with the weeds and knowing I will get to them eventually (next spring).