Don't Let the Weeds Take Over

A couple years ago when I had more of a weed garden than a vegetable garden, I gave up and started just buying my zucchini and green beans.  I still plant flowers in several areas around my house, but this year, the weeds are winning there, too!  It's so frustrating to have the beauty of the flowers overshadowed by the weeds. A few days ago, as I was inspecting my flower beds and audibly complaining to myself about all the weeds, I realized something - weeds are a perfect metaphor for all the bad habits in my life.  

Weeds and bad habits take over quickly and often surprise us when they do.
How many times have you pulled all the weeds in your flower bed and then the next time you look, the weeds have popped back up?  Bad habits can do the same.  You make a commitment not to look at a screen an hour before bed and hit the sack by 11 p.m. every night.  This goes well, for about a week, and you feel marvelous.  Soon you hear yourself complaining about feeling so tired all of the time, and you realize that you've been watching Netflix til past midnight every night this week - when did that start back up again? 

Weeds and bad habits don't require fertilizer to thrive.
Weeds seem to most prefer poor conditions like no water and high temperatures.  It always amazes me how weeds can survive when everything we actually want to live just shrivels up.   Bad habits also seem to pop up in the droughts of life.  When conditions are the worst, our bad habits seem to thrive.  Flowers or vegetables need watering and the right amount of sunlight to grow and produce a crop just like good habits require a carefully planned strategy to maintain.  It's so much easier to fall back into bad habits than it is to maintain new, good habits.

Weeds and bad habits take away nourishment from the healthy things around them.
When your flowerbed has a lot of weeds, your flowers have to fight them for what they need to survive.  Bad habits take away energy and focus that we need to be productive and healthy.  We can keep up a facade of good habits while we maintain our bad habits in secret, but eventually we will become exhausted and the bad habits will win unless we completely prune them.
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Weeds and bad habits make the pretty things around them almost unnoticeable.
You can have the most beautiful flowers, but if they are surrounded by weeds, you know what everyone will see?  The weeds!  If I never miss a bedtime song and prayer with my kids, but have a bad habit of yelling- what is the most noticeable? ​

"It's so much easier to fall back into bad habits than it is to maintain new, good habits."

​Weeds and bad habits require regular attention to keep them at bay.
​The longer you let the weeds grow, the harder it is to pull them and make your garden healthy again.  Instead, if you pull them as they pop up, you can maintain a healthy crop.  In much the same way, we can monitor our habits regularly to stay aware of when the bad ones are cropping up again.

There is one good thing about weeds, though - no matter how long you let them go, with some time and concentrated effort, you can pull them and regain control of your garden.  If you decide that you're done with your bad habits, you can "weed your garden."  Each day you have the ability to make choices about your own life.  That doesn't mean it's easy to kick bad habits, but by regularly scanning for and pulling small weeds while watering and fertilizing the plants you actually want to grow, you can soon have a flourishing garden again!

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Photo by Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash