OUCH...

Valentines Day, 2010

I just got done pruning my plants out in the front. These plants were beautiful the first year I planted them. They have vines that wrapped around our two columns in the front of our house. They were really bright and green and had lots of white, trumpet shaped flowers. I ended up just doing the basics to keep it alive. I watered it a few times a week and once a year basically gave it some plant food.
I pass by these two plants everyday. I look at them several times a day as I come and go from my home. Sometimes lately I have looked at these plants and felt a little guilty because they are no longer beautiful and I know that they are dying. I don’t even water them anymore. I thought about just throwing them away and getting new ones.
So today, the sun is shining and I have been going through a personal hell and feel like I have had someone come and suck all the life out of me. So, I got my scissors and started cutting all the dead vines away. I don’t want anything dead to stare at anymore! As I cut into the first vine that from all appearance looked dead, to my surprise inside the hard, ugly vine was soft green life. I kept cutting through what looked like death to me and found life over and over again. Under all the tangled ugly vines were dead leaves and mold where spiders found refuge and made their home.
After I cut all the vines I started sweeping all the dead and dry leaves that covered the soil, hiding the soil from any sunlight so it could thrive. I then took a long stick and punched holes in the root system because I remember that if you want plants to continue to grow and thrive you have to injure it so that it can be stimulated into new growth.
I got out the Miracle Grow and water and poured water all over the injured seemingly dead plant. I know that in a few weeks there will be proof of new life in the form of those beautiful bright green leaves on brand new vines and eventually flowers!
I am injured and cut down. My marriage seems hopelessly over and damaged. I am standing here bare and exposed. My root system has been severed and I sometimes just sit and shake in the brutal cold and wind. But I know that God is good and through this He will bring about new life. I will one day be more beautiful and full of life than I have been in the last few years.
Neglect is such an ugly thing…it is so easy to take advantage of something so beautiful. You pass by it everyday and in the back of your mind you know you should tend to it so that it can stay beautiful but before you know it, it seems like way to much work and it would be easier to throw it away and start all over. Where is the glory in that? Where is the worth of something so precious? I have neglected so many things and been so overwhelmed to even know where to begin to fix things…well the pruning began without my permission. God knew better than I did. Imagine that…