One of the things I love best about spring is the opportunity to eat breakfast out in my back flower garden.  It’s still cool early in the morning before my day starts but the days are longer so the sun is up.  The birds are back and their singing is music to my ears . They love this time of day!

My garden is wild and rambling.  It’s often difficult to keep it under control. I have wildflowers planted within the same beds as the perennials. Many of the plants I have would like to takeover and push out the others. I have one big leafed plant given to me by my uncle Richard that I believe is hyssop.  I fight with it constantly. Every year now I cut the tops off before these plants bloom to prevent them from spreading further. The roots are too deep to dig out completely.

Anymore, I find that rather than pulling out weeds, I am thinning out these  invasive perennials. Some like the Hyssop, I wish I had never allowed in my garden in the first place. If left alone, this one plant would dominate my whole flower bed and I would have nothing else to enjoy. This would be very boring indeed.  So I pull out what some would call “good” so I can have a beautiful, varied garden that has different blooming plants all summer. It’s a constant job but well worth the effort.

I could apply this same principle to my life. Often I’m pulling up what appears to be “good” to have “better.”  What does it take to not let one good thing invade my whole being?  It takes partially uprooting my old life to move on to better.

On May 1st it was the one year anniversary of my new job with IU Health and it’s been a satisfying year.  I was literally pushed out of my old job by an intolerable situation and extreme stress.  The harder I worked to make it right, the worse it became.  God opened a door, giving me the opportunity to leave for a position still practicing medicine but for fewer hours and at a much more relaxed pace.

A year ago, I walked through that door and had to decide what to do with the extra time I suddenly had before me.  I had been so overwhelmed with medical work that I literally had to force other activities into my schedule. I was exhausted all the time and not worth much to myself or others.  It was painful to leave my old patients since many of them had become like family to me. I know they must have felt the loss as much as I did.  But I had come to a time that it was necessary to pull up the good to have a better life. Nothing was inherently bad about what I was doing previously. I don’t regret my past work but it became too much of the same thing. It crowded out other parts of me that needed to bloom.

Since that time, I have been able to read more and develop my passion for writing.  I’ve had more time to spend with others and deepen those relationships.  I have space to add activities that would have been impossible to fit in before. I can be tempted to fill in this extra space with one activity after another and end up in the same place I was a year ago. If I say yes to everything, then I will be on the go all the time and not have space for quiet.

Everyone needs quiet space away from the noise and busyness of everyday life.  Even Jesus did.  He often retreated to a quiet place to pray.  My garden is that quiet place.  But even here, it can be difficult to quiet the mind.  I need to just listen for a while without thinking of everything else that needs to be done.  I need to leave space for Jesus. He desires a relationship much more than works.  I can go, go , go, doing and saying the right things but it I don’t spend time building a relationship with Jesus then I have missed the whole point.

It’s much like the situation of Mary and Martha in the Bible.  Both of them were deeply loved by Jesus and they each loved Him too.  But Martha was caught up in “doing.”  Mary knew how to just “be” with Jesus. She chose the better thing.  I need to cultivate “being” with Him in my garden. My life is much more conducive to quiet time now.  But I have to learn how to shut off my mind from having a constant banter of thoughts.  I pray for Jesus to help me learn the art of quietness of spirit so I can know Him intimately as He desires to be known.