The Sylvr Pen

Weed I must.

Look at that weed clump, rooted in, replenishing its life at cost of frail flowers and soft leaves and beauty—encroaching around them like a stalking strangler, to take over life, rob breath.

With mere gloved hands, as I most often work these soft beds built up tender over years, I can’t loose its power grasp. Deeper stronger tools I need. And then it’s hook the claw around and yank, yank, yank, to free the smallest part—over and again, straining shoulder muscles, breaking sweat. Nearly half an hour’s work on what was, not long past, one tiny weed.

But rainstorms and hard heat and harvest and over-busy calendar precluded noticing its stealth before the menace tightened its grip.

Now those insidious creeping roots reach so tangling into others better than themselves, that pull I must at the cost of new beloved sprouts.

I sigh. How like my earthtime! I need weeding, and need to weed. I overlook, neglect the duty, and God weeds. And the pulling tears at my heart sometimes, as it strips away well-loved hopeful things—though I find in fact sometimes that all along they too were weeds!

Life weeding can be painful. But beyond the rips and losses, sweat and tears, I breathe fuller, fresher, freer air, and send outward from my heart new roots, new shoots, new buds and blossoms otherwise never to have grown and bloomed.

Thank You, Lord, for weedings.

*****

They must be thinned, and I am the one to do it.

Husband tussles with the rototiller, pushes and pulls the brute work with the tractor, yanks out weeds deep-rooted, fights with thorn bushes giant and wild. Gingerly plucking tiny threads of plants from clumps of companions doesn’t fit. Dainty. Slow, meticulous.

So I sit in the heat and finger-tweeze, thankful I’m not clinging, teeth chattering, to a gyrating tiller, or, red-faced, digging post holes or straining at huge weeds. But a certain reluctance jags at me every time I do this.

I don’t mind slow and meticulous. I just hate the choosing: which to pull and toss to die there on the path, which to favor with survival. Some that “must go,” look the best of the lot.

But all that crowding stifles growth and health and usefulness. Thin we must.

So I pluck: this wee clump, that single seedling edged right up against that other.

I admit I only half thin. I’ll have to repeat this job later, when the roots start swelling–and crowding again. But by then I can find a use for cute mini-carrots, and won’t feel so destructive.

God thins me. Repeatedly. Unflinching, He plucks this alive and pretty growing thing and that well-beloved sprout I was nurturing, till I feel sometimes stripped down to bare barren ditch, and wonder, sad and bereft. I don’t understand. Why did he take that vibrant, glowing thing, and leave this dull and small one, so useless seeming?

Then time and growth comes by, and sun and waterings, and I find I’m breathing freer. My joy has grown, not shrunk, my fruitfulness is fuller, richer, and so is my heart. Like the vine branches the Vinedresser prunes (John 15:1-2).

Thin we must. Thinned we must be. Thank You, Lord, for thinning.

*****

Today I read:

“My soul melteth for heaviness; strengthen Thou me, according to Thy word” (Psalm 119:28) …

and I laugh a little. I know the verse means wilting with discouragement (and I have just been there, and prayed this verse accordingly), but today I am thinking it a prayer addressing my melting in the heat.

A three-H day…

you can already see the heat in the haze…

…and I must go out in it, thin carrots, pick blueberries, rip out some particularly invasive weeds that not be allowed to root in so tenacious as they’re starting to do. And hot humid haze is my nemesis. I wilt, I melt, my eyes soon blur in midsummer’s steam.

Yet here I sit, first praising God with Psalms and songs, taking my second time with the Creator between chicken plucking and, shortly, my day’s writing.

All this will put me in the garden after shade has left and sun rays are pounding. But when it comes to wrestling routines back into place, I realize I must keep right order. Priorities first—those things we usually jettison in favor of the pushy to-do list of wood, hay, and stubble, and of watching the weather to avoid unpleasant field conditions (Ecc 11:4).

So, to venture into the day’s oven later, I will arm myself with a thermos of Wellspring’s water, and this prayer: “My soul is melting with heaviness; strengthen Thou me (for the task), according to Thy word!”

I pray:

“My soul clings to the dust. Revive me according to Your word” (Ps 119:25).

The soil is thirsty in the hand. The ground is dust.

The garden languishes, the plants wilt.

My soul thirsts also, languishes, wilts.

We need water.

According to His word:

“I will pour water on him who is thirsty. I will pour streams upon the dry ground” (Is 44:3).

Water was there first, before anything else. The first day (Gen 1:1-2)

The second day, God separated the waters, differentiated the waters–above and below the firmament heaven (Gen 1:6-8).

Earth water and heaven water.

And Jesus said, amid parching heat, to the comfort-thirsty, love-thirsty woman at the well: “Whoever drinks of this [earth] water, will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst… [it] will become in him a fountain of water, springing up to everlasting life” (John 4:13-14).

I think of all this as I water, and the showers of blessing make rainbows in the air.

Winding hose on holder, I think how I once wanted to name this place “Everspring” or “Wellspring” and post those words of Christ’s somewhere. The Funny Farm had such a seemingly boundless supply of pure freshness. But I had too little faith in its constancy.

Things can happen.

Things did. Twice circumstances cut off totally all house supply.

But Christ’s supply has never failed.

I fail. And flail. But I pray. “My soul cleaveth unto the dust.” I pray for Him to renew my life with His “washing of water by the word” (Eph 5:26). And He pours water upon my dry ground. I soak it up, drink it in, weep joy.

I am a well-watered soul.

*****

Routine, I am finding, doesn’t re-establish itself after over a month of distracted neglect. It needs wrestling back into place. If 21 days suffice to establish a habit, that many days can also bring it near death by starvation.

It’s almost like starting out new: one part of the shattered routine at a time. (Flylady’s baby steps, all over again.) Review should shift them into auto-pilot before long, but for now I’m having to rework one thing, then another, get all those physical items back in their places (then keep them there)–and do the same with the daily duties.

But… one part of my routine continues like breathing, because I did not let it escape me even in all the comfortable chaos: my day-start adoration. My lesson in this: where at all possible, not to let important routines get pushed aside, at least totally. They’re easier to maintain, even with battle effort, than to re-establish later.

Day-start worship happens because repetition rooted it deep and deeper. As bed-making, laundry load thrown in (even if not lately on clock schedule). Remaining routines need a lot of retraining! So tomorrow: on the buzzer with what I’ve managed to keep in place. Then a daily housekeeping baby- step, then restarting my writing by pre-determined time (9 AM at the latest).

Back to rigors, back to schedules, bit by bit, back to balance: spirit and flesh, intellect and body, labor and (yeah, don’t forget) rest! And oh, also not to forget just enjoyment—appreciative joy.