On Battling the Weeds
On earth, and in my heart
The grass won, I’m sad to say.
When I moved to this property late last summer, we got to work clearing vegetation off of the house. In that process, we removed a lot of weeds from the bed right outside of the kitchen, and I covered up the whole mess of grass with cardboard and compost, a technique I’d had a lot of good success with in the past. I had some help with it all, a former landscaper who decided to help me out on weekends. He never understood why I paid him to come out to help me get rental properties under control. Maybe he was just happy to see me finally in my own place. In any case, the grass in the kitchen bed was tamed all autumn and winter, and when the weather warmed up, in went all of my new plants, mostly herbs and other perennials.
Then, spring. The warmer temperatures combined with the rotting cardboard and lovely compost, so the grass shot straight up with full force. I attempted to pull them up by the roots every other day, but the underground runners were relentless, and showed up even between the rocks that had been removed and replaced.
Today, I gave up. I harvested all of the salad greens that was growing in the weeds, and covered as much as I could with black plastic, hoping the grass would just cook underneath and die already. Sometimes you need to not only recognize the enemy, but cut your losses and ruthlessly kill the thing. The losses, though, are hard.
Because sometimes the losses are more than just lettuce. Sometimes the losses involve time invested, hope embraced, and money spent. And if those losses are growing up amongst the weeds—sort of kind of maybe looking halfway ok?—I’m tempted to learn to live with it. Who needs a clean crop?
Perfectionism aside, weeds and vegetables don’t play well together, for the weeds will rob the produce of water and nutrients and starve it out. Somehow in the midst of all that sighing I did while looking at my small garden, I thought of wheat growing amongst the tares, and how God actually does care about the difference between the two and separating them (Matt 13:24-30). However, we are not at the end of the age and so the stubborn grasses remained.
So I saved what I could, then scraped (and scraped) with a hoe. I covered as much as I could with that plastic, hoping that in this growing season, the lack of light and moisture will starve and shrivel the roots. It dawned on me while hunched over and scratching up the soil that this mess is also a reflection of the homeland of my heart: wheat and tares—fruits of the spirit and determined idolatries—all intertwined and seeking to rule the ground they take and still not playing well together despite my efforts. However, my Father in heaven is forever the Master Gardener, and His pruning and pulling up doesn’t ever involve uprooting anything good He has planted and begun. I’m the one who keeps the weeds there, thinking it’s better not to disturb the bed. Better, methinks, that love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance live alongside selfishness, demands, expectations, disappointments, and having my own “needs” met. How does God not sigh over my heart’s foolish garden, I will never understand.
In any case, I’m not dead yet so God is not finished with me. If I get another season here, I will tackle this grass again and pray for the upper hand both on the earth and in my heart. One season’s loss is not the final score, and anyway I already know how it all turns out in the end. In the meantime, grow me, Lord.
Isaiah 51:3 For the LORD shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving, and the voice of melody.