Leaving a Mark Behind – Legacy Leadership for Life

Oh! Those Pesky WEEDS! April 26, 2010

It’s springtime and I’ve started working in my yard.

It’s come a long way since we moved in over 10 years ago. There was very little grass and quite a few weeds. In West Texas a good grass to have is Bermuda. It is heat hardy, spreads quickly and doesn’t need deep roots. So…after a few years of consistent watering and a lawn service for fertilizing, we now have grass over the entire yard.

Our West Texas soil is hard and it takes a lot of effort for any type of grass to grow. It takes a lot of water to keep it green — ‘paid for’ water because we don’t get much rain.

Some people give up and pave most of their yard — some xeriscape and plant regional grasses and plants. Honestly, sometimes it just looks like they let the weeds grow. (Only my personal opinion.)

When I was younger, my Dad ‘taught’ me how to pull sticker weeds in the yard — goat heads. Until I learned to recognize them I pulled a lot of milkweeds. (Also something you don’t want in your yard — but not nearly as painful.) A small claim to fame is that I can spot a goathead plant from across the yard — yours or mine!

However, it took me quite awhile to learn the difference between ‘good’ grass and ‘bad’ grass.

Now, while Bermuda grows well, many people here prefer St. Augustine. It has wide blades, is a deep green and if you happen to have trees in the yard it grows well in the shade.

Unfortunately I couldn’t tell the difference between crab grass and St. Augustine until I had a conversation with my father-in-law as he worked in his yard.  I know that some people consider Bermuda grass a bane to their yard, but I’m pretty sure crab grass is a no-no everywhere.

Crab grass is pretty — it greens early — it grows well. The problem? It chokes up the root systems of the other grasses and steals their nutrients. It’s a weed — a parasite — a life stealer. You can’t kill it with weed killer because you end up killing the good grass, too. The good news is that it has a single tap-root so that if the soil is wet you can pull a ton of it out in one fell swoop with very little effort!

It takes diligence, but year by year I’m eradicating the crab grass. thankfully I AM goathead and milkweed free!

Our thoughts are a lot like a yard. Through trial and error we learn which ones serve us and which ones destroy us. We don’t learn all the signs right away and sometimes a ‘weed’ can get out of control.

Some thoughts LOOK like good thoughts. They masquerade as something else until suddenly their true, life-stealing properties are revealed.

Some steps to find out the difference?

1) Does this thought serve me or do I serve it?

2) If I continue to believe this what will my life be like in 1 year? 5 years? Ten?

3) If I refuse to believe this thought what will change for me?

4) Does this thought give me REAL freedom?  A FALSE freedom? Make me a SLAVE?

All of us have weeds lurking in the lawn of our mind. Some take more work than others to eradicate. But all of them with time and diligence can be done away with.

From time to time a milkweed or goathead plant will sneak into my yard. You can imagine they experience a quick end. And now that I’ve learned to recognize it so does the crabgrass!

Same way with most life-stealing thoughts. A quick pull and out they go!

But like some of you, I’m still fighting a good fight against a few areas of crab grass. It still takes a bit of work to get rid some of those thoughts for good. My choice is to stay watchful and diligent against those thoughts that don’t serve me and seek to steal my life away.

Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. – Proverbs 4:23