At The Cottage Background

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Uprooting



I had been watching it for a while.
This morning as I looked out I did a double take.
It had gotten so huge.
It filled the pot that it had taken over.
When did it get so big?
I mean… it wasn't that big that long ago. Was it?
I had been trying to ignore it.
I didn't want to take the time to go out there. To pull it up.
It would take too much time. And I knew that if I started that I would have to finish it. I would look around and see all the others that had come along without my notice and taken root.


Weeds.

They are ugly things.
And so often in our lives they creep in, without our notice and begin to take up a place that begins to become so filled by them that we can't ignore or not not see them anymore.


They creep in and they don't always start out ugly.

They can look good at first.
Green, maybe with a tiny flower or two to make us think it won't cause any harm.
And then… one day… we look out and see the destruction that it has created.
The harm it has done without our attention.
Did we allow it to get here? Did we just sit idly by while it began it's slow growth? Overpowering everything else it comes into contact with?
One day we just notice that we can't breath. It's become so crowded.
No matter how hard we try to push it down, nudge it aside, we just continue to sit there. Cramped. Uncomfortable.

I realized, as I finally opened up my screen and let my feet lead me over to the pot that held my monstrosity, that I have been ridiculous.
How many days had I looked out at this very spot and said to myself, "I've got to take care of that."
But no action followed that statement until today.
I'm not sure what gave.
Maybe it's the heavy that has been weighing so much on the very deepest parts of my soul.
Maybe I have become so tired by the constant tension that feels like it is about to snap.
My heart… the crowding. The thought processes that go around and around and have become so tangled up that I have had to begin to untangle them from the very things that I don't want them to touch.
Maybe I was done seeing the ugly that I can feel right under my skin.

As I yanked and pulled I prayed….


"Oh God. Oh Lord. pull them up from me. Please take them out. Once and for all. All of my weeds. All of the things that I have allowed to crowd the very things you want planted for me."


It can happen slow, and I imagine the uprooting can't always be as easy as we would want it to be.
But sometimes it can.
Sometimes we just need to march out right to where we know that we need to stand and we need to just start  pulling, uprooting.
I'm not sure why today.
I'm not sure why it meant more to me today to begin to take hold and start ripping out what I have been tired of seeing and looking at for longer than I should have.

I understand the weary.
I also understand the pull to not allow any more room for the things in my life where God can't have complete access to everything that I am.


Here I am.


When the words can't fill the void and where only action will cure….
Even before I took my feet from my bed. Before they could touch the wood beneath the weight of me.
This song…
I had fallen asleep last night.
My whispers spoken out… prayers for so many things that I had to stop trying to find an intelligible way to say them.
Heavy.
Big.
And when I woke… the words were there.
Like I had dreamed them and woken up in the middle of their march through my unconscious thoughts.
I couldn't shake them.
They kept playing over and over. Like a melody on repeat.
I scrambled to find it.
To hear the words penetrate my surroundings.
I was desperate to "see" it.
As the words began to form and the sound began to break… I broke.


I am in need of what only He can do.


Uprooting…clearing…planting... resurrecting.

I suspect this is why.

Today was the day.

Before I took a step into my kitchen.
Before my eyes strayed to the very spot that would eventually bring me to here.
He knew.
I'm not sure how that makes you feel… but for me...
For someone who is so desperate to know…. to hear...


I have hope.


… Until another tomorrow.

~Melissa


Psalm 31... in its entirety. 

The song that I woke to...