Weeding Your Garden

Today I took some time and tended to my very own, first garden of my life. I have been waiting for this Spring/Summer for years, so that I could finally plant my own garden and tend to it and watch it grown and enjoy the benefits from it.
Since we bought our house last year at the end of May and didn't really move in til end of June, we didn't have time to make up a garden. I've been planning all Winter for where it should go (we had to actually make a spot for it, no existing one), and what all I wanted to grow in it.

Once the time was right, we spend an entire day just rotatilling the location of the land. It was actually rather fun, but yet, I wasn't the one doing the HARD work. :) My poor husband.
Anyways...
here is what the process has been for us...

We planted:
Green Peppers
Cucumbers
4 different Tomatoes
Jalapeno Peppers
Lettuce
Carrots

I'm using this year as a trial year to see how things go with the location and soil we have first, and then I plan on making adjustments.

So when I went to go see my garden tonight after work, I realized I have been failing to upkeep my poor little guys growing. Sure they have been watered, but they needed so much more than that. They needed some good ol' TLC.

Here is what my garden looked like:

Pretty sad, right? Yeah, I was sad. I finally had the time and NEEDED to clean up my garden for my poor little veggies to grow!
I started out, thinking, ah, this will be a cinch; it'll only take me a 1/2 hour to do this MAX.

As I started and worked my way through, I soon realized that if I wanted to truly care for these plants, I needed to till up the ground a little and really get everything out for them. There was some little rocks mixed in, weeds, old roots, and other odds things. I thought to myself, "I don't remember the soil being this bad and mix with odd things like this when I planted this stuff!" At any rate, I started to think about this.
My life, Your life, is no different than this garden.
I am a pepper plant, lets say, and I'm newly planted and trying to take off on this journey and produce some awesome "fruits" as they say and blossom in this world. In my peppers case, trying to produce some amazingly delicious peppers for me. :)
But along the way, along your journey of GETTING planting, you run into some weeds or some things get you off track. You might still be there and alive, but you aren't truly able to spread out and blossom, because there is debre in  your life that needs to get cleaned up. My garden had a LOT of debre and things in the soil that I didn't think was there, but somehow was. Doesn't matter where or how it got there, it was there, and I needed to tend to it and clean it up.
God does that for us. He cleans up our lives, IF we let Him. Junk might sit in your life for days, weeks, months...and it will hinder your walk and hinder your journey that you are suppose to be on. If you don't allow the caretaker to get ride of the rocks and weeds in your life, your roots won't get firmly planted and you won't be able to produce what God is trying to do in your life. He might have something BIG for you and you don't even know it. But are you allowing Him to work in your life and tend to your life so that you can?
It really hit me when I was weeding and pulling little rocks out of the soil. I just thought, man, how could I let my garden get like this, it hasn't even been that long since I planted it. But the truth is, you might think your soil is rich and well nourished, but until you dig out past the surface, will the true colors of the soil be revealed.
Honestly, right now my life (my soil) isn't very rich. It needs to get some weeds and rocks out of it.
The 1/2 hour I thought it would take me MAX to weed my garden, wasn't even close. It took me nearly 2 hours to complete such a small garden. I looked at that once I got done and thought. huh...here I thought it would be a quick weed and it would be over with for a little while. Just like in my life, sometimes the weeds take weeks or months to get ride of. It takes time to refine your life. Some things might not take too much time, but the reality is, the more time you tend to your garden, the more rich your soil will become and the happier your plants will be.
How much time am I tending to my life, to my spiritual life right now? How rich is it because of that?
I'll answer...my time for God is minimal. I have excuses, but those mean NOTHING. I'm doing NOTHING right now in my life to make my soil rich. In fact, I feel like I'm LETTING weeds grow right now. Why? Good question, I have no idea. The funny, sad thing is...I know how rich my soil should be and can be. But yet I'm choosing to let my soil go for a period of time.
I know it will take time, even as I write this, to tend to myself and let God weed me out. I'm asking for that right now, for God, will you please weed me? I need some weeds pulled because they are causing me to not grow and they are causing my surroundings to suffer as well.
I want my soil and my life to be rich for you. It might take weeks or months for you Lord to work in my life to get these weeds out, maybe not. But I'm here and willing to take that time with you and asking for your help. Please be patience with me as the weeds might be not want to come out right away.
I hope that in the end...I can have an end result like this: