Hoeing the Row

As I've begun my happiness experiment and really tried to bring my thoughts and words under a conscious, deliberate control, I still find myself falling short. I still say things I don't want to say and don't say the things I should.

So it's back to the garden for me...and a little pruning and hoeing the row. I remember my dad always enjoyed having grape vines out at our place in the country. Every spring, while it still felt like winter, he'd go out and hack the grapevine down to a nub! He told me he was pruning it. I was sceptical. How can pruning something so severely HELP a plant to grow? And yet, every year, dad was proved right. The vine would grow more than 30 feet each year, but only after he had pruned back ALL the dead branches. New growth was optimized by a lack of dead branches vying for the energy of the plant.

Why do I put so much energy into dead projects, dead attitudes, dead words? It only drains me. Sure, it might seem like I'm thriving on the surface, but when you get down deep, there's no fruit. Just leafy death. And frankly, poison ivy can be very green and leafy too, but I'm not gonna make a cup of tea out of it! Ya know? It's like being a white-washed tomb. Sure, it might look nice on the outside, but it's still a tomb, a place of death.

I guess it's time to get out the hoe and start chopping out the weeds in my life, like thoughts and words which don't bring life to myself or others. How many times do I resort to gossip? That's a weed that I don't want to take root!

And the thing about hoeing this row is that no one else can do it for me. I have to roll up my own sleeves, find the weeds, and root them out! And the way to do that is to continue digging for reasons to praise others, pruning away criticism and judgment and tossing them on the brush fire, and looking to the Master Gardener to see what kind of vegetation He would recommend, by looking in the handy gardening guide known as the Bible. Hebrews 4:12 says "the word of God is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, it divides between the joints and the marrow, the soul and the spirit. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts." And in another ancient passage it is written that "they shall beat their swords into plowshares."

Welp, back to the garden. I've got some pruning and weeding to do, even if it's with a sword or machete!