This year I had an ugly garden. And every time I passed it by, I thought about how I needed to find the time to pull some weeds, plant some new flowers and divide some plants that were overgrown and hogging up the space.
And every time I passed it by, I groaned and sighed and shook my head and walked away wondering why my neighbors haven’t lynched me by now.
Right now I have an ugly closet. I mean a real live tangled mess of outgrown, out of style ugliness in an unorganized mess. Every time I go in there I groan and sigh, and shake my head and walk away wondering when I am finally going to get sick of it enough to change it.
Right now I have an ugly basement. Dark and dingy and filled with intruding clutter that has no excuse for being there. Every time I go down there, I groan and sigh and shrug my shoulders and give myself a little lecture about wasted space and clutter.
There have been a million wonderful things that have happened this year. And when I take a moment to be nice to myself, I can come up with a thousand reasons why I haven’t found the time to get around to those three areas of life.
But the truth of the matter is this:
No matter how much beauty I have planted, cultivated and cared for in my life this year, I still have these three area that are like weeds choking the energy, peace and beauty out of my days. They drain me, age me, and fill me with negative, self-depreciating chatter that fills my mind with ugliness.
It’s easy to think we can ignore the ugliness in our life. Easy to think if we just close our eyes and focus on the positive that we don’t have to care about the things that make us sigh, groan and shake our heads.
But the truth is they matter. They hold us back,they drain us of energy, they cause us to settle and they steal our joy.
No one wants to look at the ugliness, but ugly breeds. If ignored, it grows. If ignored too long, it takes over.
Time to pull some ugly weeds out of my life.
What ugly gardens are planted in your life right now?
