Growing through it all

When I was young my dad told me  I had a forest worth of leaves I said that I was turning over. The fact is, I wanted to be “good.” I tried hard. Whatever I was doing wrong, I wanted to stop and figure out how not to keep doing it. Today, some 50 + years later, I feel a little stuck in that little kid that never seemed to ever win the battle with myself. And if we are talking about buttons, my biggest one is, the guilt button. Feeling as if I have failed everyone else, but mostly myself.

I have been in places in my life, where I have thought. I’m never going to do it right for EVERYONE so, I just abandon all of my efforts and selfishly do what I want. I have always had this wild fantasy of just running away. Luckily as I grew up and learned about responsibility and then became a mother, I stopped running. Though I think when my marriage of fourteen years failed, I went through a mini-breakdown inside of myself and laid the first row of bricks that later would become the wall I began building around myself years ago.

As a kid, I never was one to not say what I felt. I mean, as I grew up, I grew a filter. But have been known to wear my feelings on my sleeve. One thing I have learned is that there is power in not telling people everything you are thinking. I have come to the conclusion that no one is entitled to KNOW everything until or if I am ready to share it. Though that wearing my feelings on my sleeve thing gets in the way a lot, because between the wall and having trouble not showing when I am hurt or angry, it is like an oxymoron raging inside of me. That ambivalence between wanting to do what is right but finding myself doing the opposite.

If you have followed me at all, you know by now, that I love a good metaphor and as I walked outside to turn on my studio the sprinklers turned on, it came to me just how to explain how I feel inside of me, this very minute. I am our lawn. I just mowed it a few days ago, so it still looks freshly manicured. Part of our lawn is pretty real grass that my husband just recently planted, part is still just dirt, (some still struggling to sprout the seeds planted) and the other half is dying old real grass that is having a tough time surviving this summer’s triple digit heat, and the other is just weeds that we pretend is grass or try not to notice isn’t, that we mow and water along with the other. Do you see where I am going with this?

Like the lawn, I am STILL a work in progress. Still worth being worked on. Still learning. Still struggling to grow new seed. Though, there is still a lot of work to do, wasting time on watering the old weeds, seems to be senseless.  But anywaay, my husband tells me that he has some weed killer he is planning on using out there when he can get to it! 🙂

I guess my point is… That I have learned, only God can get the weeds out. But He still tends to the places that I allow. The dead grass, the dirt, and the weeds are where I waste a lot of my time. Even though I see growth where the seeds were planted. I just need to realize that until I stop and hand it ALL over to HIM, I will remain stuck watering the weeds.