What is growing in the garden of your life that you’re not paying attention to? We get busy with the day to day routines: cooking, cleaning, laundry, shuttling kids, changing diapers, cleaning messes, working outside the home, caring for aging parents, the list goes on.
Tending to the garden of our hearts takes time, energy and focus, all tools you may feel you don’t have in your garden tote. In different seasons the weeds grow more rampantly than others. When I have allowed the weeds to go, the work to remove them is overwhelming. When I have been too busy to be consistent in tending the garden, it shows.
What to do to get back a tended, well watered garden (think life)?
1. Start weeding.
What’s there that isn’t helpful? What’s getting in the way, crowding out the good things you want to see in the garden of your life? Get rid of whatever that is for you.
2. Ask for help.
Weeding takes a practiced eye; knowing what is a weed and what is a good plant can be confusing if you’re not used to the practice of tending the garden. You might need a mentor, a seasoned gardener, to help you recognize what doesn’t belong.
3. Adjust your priorities
Everything cannot have #1 priority. Really hard for an over-achiever to hear, I know! Learning to know the difference between what things are ‘have tos’ and what things are ‘want tos’ also takes practice. In different seasons your time must be spent in particular ways and in other seasons you’ll find there is more discretionary time. But the fact remains, a little regular attention to the garden is the better practice than only one day a week or once a month!
Start.
Who knows, once you get in there you may discover the Master Gardener has planted something in your life that you weren’t aware of!
