Deep Thoughts from the Weed Patch

Well, geez, if we aren't delinquent bloggers...our apologies for the lapse in updates. There are lots of good reasons for it, none of which you are probably interested in hearing, so I'll save my typing space for more useful thoughts. :)

Anyway, here we are...in West Virginia...so many exciting things going on! We really love being here in Harpers Ferry running this campground, and we love all the cool things there are to do out here. We've been to DC a couple of times, took a trip to Atlantic City, visited Covenant Life Church a few times, found a great disc golfing course...it's endless! We have a dog now, too...his name is Jasper and he's a lab/shepherd mix. We'll post a picture as soon as we get to it...if I can remember how to do it. It took me 15 minutes to log on to blogger.com to type this post because it's been so long since I was last on that I couldn't remember the password to save my life.

Anyway, I didn't hop on here today to give you a total rundown of all our excitement; I've just had some neat thoughts lately that I thought maybe were worth sharing. I (Maria) am working as a landscaper here at the campground, and have spent most of my time so far pulling weeds, because it is rediculous to plant a flower in the middle of a weed patch and expect it to grow. If that isn't a great life metaphor right there! Anyway, it has been great fun, let me tell you. I have done my share of grumbling about it. But God has acutally used those long hours with the weeds to teach me a few things.

There is this kind of weed I've been encountering all over the campground that drives me crazy. I don't know what it's called or even how to describe it to you other than that it looks like grass but has the longest root I have ever seen, and the root grows sideways, across the ground about two inches under the surface instead of growing straight down into the ground. I am not kidding you, I have pulled up a clump of grassy weed and found myself unearthing a stretch of mulch several feet long where the root of the dumb thing was hiding. You pull up a clump of weed on your left and find out that its root actually begins 8 feet to your right. And it never grows in a straight line across the ground; it zigzags all over the place, often crossing back over itself on the way.

So I'm sitting in a bed of mulch, pulling up these weeds and roots that go for miles, and it occurs to me that these weeds are a lot like women. Being one, I feel qualified to make this statement. :) But seriously. Much like the weed begins in one place but actually appears in a totally different place, so do many of our issues/frustrations rarely appear anywhere near the actual cause of the discord. I get mad at Nate for leaving the milk out after pouring some on his cereal but the real reason I am mad is in fifth grade Kelsey told Amanda I had a bad haircut and that because of it I couldn't sit at their lunch table. I get mad at the dog for licking me and wiping his wet nose on me when the problem is really that some other landscaper took my golf cart this morning and I had to haul my heavy watering can all over the campground by hand. We women hardly ever get mad at the real source of our frustrations; we like to save it and let it pop out at the most random times, over the most random things.

Also similar to the way this weed acts is the way sin acts in our lives. It doesn't look too bad on the surface, but it is going to be a lot harder to get rid of than you think. It has deep, long roots, and often affects more areas of our lives than we are willing to admit. Sometimes our sin is even undetectable until it makes a huge mess in someone else's flower bed, and sometimes its our flower bed that is ruined by another's long-rooted sin weed. What sins am I feeding and watering unknowingly? What sins are you keeping under the surface, believing no one will ever see them?

Nothing profound, nothing earth-shattering...just some thoughts from the weed patch. And there are more to come...these are Tuesday's thoughts and it's now Thursday...I'm behind already! It's going to be an interesting summer.