Is It Possible They're Weeds?

I’m no master gardener. Trust me on that. In fact, when I tried think of a word for those with a green thumb, I came up with “master gardener”. That’s clearly not the actual vocabulary of someone who is one.

However, we love planting colorful flowers in our front flower bed. Zinnias are a favorite and, last spring, we ordered some from a school fundraiser and planted them. We have a tendency to also get sucked in by the colorful seed packets on racks in garden centers. They seem fool-proof and not expensive, so why not? So, we bought a wildflower mix which included more zinnias and planted them all around the existing plants.

By the time we almost forgot about the seeds, small plants began to crop up. We were so excited! The leaves looked a little different from our existing zinnias, but we assumed it was one of the other flowers in the mix or simply a different variety of zinnia.

We watered and cared for these plants daily for almost two months -just waiting for them to burst out in color. Soon, they grew up above the other flowers and created a canopy over them and I started to worry they’d kill the pretty zinnias that were already flowering. I remember having a conversation with my teenage daughter about them because she takes it upon herself to care for the flowers and vegetables.

“Is it possible,” I said “that those plants haven’t flowered because they’re actually weeds?”

She immediately jumped in, “I was thinking the exact same thing!”

We waited a few more days, in case we were wrong, but finally, I pulled the useless weeds that threatened to keep the sun from shining on our beautiful flowers. In their absence, the flowers have thrived even more. Which might be because it’s rained a little more, but I choose to believe it’s the added sunshine.

And while this was a simple mistake which didn’t have a lasting effect on our garden, it made me think about times I’ve done that in my life and it definitely had a lasting effect. There have been plenty of times I’ve neglected something important because I was watering and caring for things that were weeds.

I think of times when we have early commitments on a Saturday and I’m up hours in advance to make sure we are all packed up and ready for any weather or snack emergency that may occur. But, the next day I’m rolling out of bed cutting it so close to the start of church that we have to be seated in the dark by volunteers with flashlights. I’m not saying our commitments on Saturdays are worthless, but compared to Sunday, they’re weeds.

I think about mornings I forgo meaningful conversations with my kids in favor of watching stupid videos of people packing bento boxes. Note: I’m not actually packing lunches for my kids. Instead, I’m watching other people pack lunches. Weeds.

A place I have to watch for weeds is in our weekly schedule. Now that school’s back in session, our school year activities are in full-swing. I made a couple versions of our weekly schedule to make sense of everything. I think I was hoping if I could organize the schedule better it would seem more manageable but no color coding or even fun Canva decorations can camouflage the fact that we’re super busy in the evenings. It’s sort of inevitable in this stage of life because we have four kids and it’s unfair to say only one or two of them can have an activity. But, we still have to prioritize things that really matter.

In the past few years, we haven’t made time for small group in the evening. I’ve been doing women’s Bible study and my husband has met with a group of men on Saturday mornings, but we were itching to get back into a group together. Instead of cultivating weeds and hoping the flowers would live, we did our best to start with group and allow other things to fill in around it. And you know what happened? That simple decision of prioritizing group led to other small decisions that put the priority on the plants and not the weeds.

We all have the same number of hours week, so my question is, what are those weeds for you? Your priorities are probably different than mine, but I think we all have weeds -things that add nothing to our lives but threaten to choke out what matters. Things that grow too big and keep the sun from shining on what's more important. What are your weeds?

Remember the conversation I had with my daughter? Take time to sit down with your family and ask, “Is it possible that these things are weeds?” Put it all out on the table and decide what’s a priority. What are your zinnias that need more water and sunshine to thrive. And what are your weeds? Once you identify them, I pray you’ll have the courage to put on some gloves and pull them out of the ground.

Blessings,

Shannon