Weeding- Avoiding Procrastination As Well as Perfectionism.

 

All right. It's been a while. Time to write here again.

I spent several hours weeding my gardens this morning. It was not too hot and I knew I'd get more done in the morning than later in the day. 

Just as in life, it's easy to get overwhelmed by the presence of weeds in the garden. We finally had several days of good rain and the weeds clearly loved it.

The challenge for me in weeding is to not let procrastination or perfectionism get an opening. It's easy to put off weeding. Well, the weeds will be easier to pull when they're a little bigger. You know, more to hang onto. Yeah. Well, maybe.

Or on the other side perfectionism pipes up. -- there are too many weeds. I will never catch up so why get started. It's a losing battle. To fight this thinking I make my goals small. I'll just get the ones right around the plants first. Those are the ones stealing nutrients from the beloved flowers and veggies. Or...I'll just do what I can in one hour. Or even a half hour.

Invariably, I get more pulled than I had planned. Why? Because it doesn't take that long to weed. And...truth be told, I kind of like weeding. Why? Because it gives me a chance to hang out with the flowers and veggies and they give me joy.

I'm thinking theres a spiritual metaphor here. Procrastinating about pulling weeds is akin to ignoring sins and character flaws we'd like to get rid of. It's too hard. That's just the way I am. It's not that bad, etc.

Perfectionism convinces us not to try. The effort is too great. I will never succeed. Why try, etc.

Oh Lord, please help me to avoid the extremes--to be diligent and work hard but also to be humble enough to realize I will not perfectly succeed but I may indeed please the God mercy who likes the effort.