by Hailey Etter
I dread yard work.
I find deep satisfaction in completing to-do lists, and yard work is never fully finished. It can require a constant rhythm of maintenance, which invites the maintainer to sometimes step into unpleasant weather conditions, not to mention mosquito bites and getting dirty.
These are not a few of my favorite things.
Another challenge is finding time while I take care of two children. However, I caught a sliver of time today and decided that an hour of pulling weeds was better than nothing. My all-or-nothing thinking tells me to step into a task only if I can check it off the list that day.
Unfortunately, that has resulted in a massive flower bed full of weeds directly in front of my house. Clearly, doing a little at a time simply doesn’t occur to me. I learned a little bit about myself in the process of stepping up to the task. Was I willing to be in pain for something greater than the pain – change? You bet. I am hosting a baby shower at my home in a few weeks. My yard has to look decent if people are coming over.
Codependency wins.
As I was piddling in my yard, picking up sticks and pulling up weeds, I started to think about the different types of weeds I was seeing. There were small weeds with shallow roots.
Large weeds with deeper roots that required a firmer grasp.
And then, some had roots that were connected on the surface, but beneath the soil, a much deeper root system was at work.
But as I started to weed, I realized that the weeds were all similar in that if you didn’t get to the root, it always comes back.
I have struggled with anxiety for a great portion of my life. It could be easy to see my anxiety as a superficial issue that simply needs to be managed or pulled up, like a shallow weed. However, the more that I have explored and come to terms with my story and the pain within it, I see how deeply rooted my anxiety is.
I understand how my anxiety has helped protect me.
Helped me keep going.
.
Helped me escape my fate.
Healing and weeding are not about fixing the broken parts of me and checking them off the list. Healing and learning to live is a process that takes patience, work, and time. A steady faithfulness in the right direction. A change in perspective. A willingness to weed with the time I am given, knowing that the work will never be finished.
Acceptance of this gives me freedom.
Do you ever wonder why your anxiety continues to resurface even with a toolbox full of coping skills?
Have you ever noticed unhealthy patterns in relationships consistently re-surfacing in your story?
The issues we continue to struggle with on a daily basis, whether they are relational, spiritual or emotional, most often have deeper roots that need to be tended to if we want deep healing.