My husband and I joke that he only moved in three things when we got married: his bike collection, his guitar collection, and his plant collection. I benefit from all three, but I’m specifically loving the plants.
Daniel is a master green thumb, especially when it comes to violets (which I have a pretty storied history of killing myself). The trick, he says, is in the pruning. At first it struck me as unnecessarily brutal to take a pair of scissors to those innocent little leaves that don’t seem to be hurting a soul. But if his flowering pots are any indication, this method seems to be working.
Yesterday I had one of those pruning conversations myself. Someone I love gently held up the mirror to me on one of those habitual sins I wasn’t even aware I’d been guilty of. And for me, those deeply entrenched lifestyle sins are way more painful to prune away than the one-time doozies. It feels more like digging up a root than trimming an errant leaf.
As much as it hurts to feel the shears, though, it’s what I want. It’s only when I let someone close enough to show me who I really am that they can help trim away the places that are quite literally sucking the life out of me.
Grace, I am learning, sometimes comes in the form of pruning shears.
He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more.
—John 15:2
Well stated!
We are all guilty of the same thing. Thanks for being so open and honest. What a good reminder to us all to be open to God’s pruning.
Thanks, Nancy. It’s nice to have people who are gentle with the shears. 🙂
Stephanie… I’m finally catching up on some of the blogs I follow, including some of your posts I missed. I LOVE this metaphor! It’s so perfect! I might borrow it from time-to-time if you don’t mind.
Thanks, Brad! Plant trimming is a lot like running, I think…the pain is worth it!