I had an experience a few weekends ago that was eye opening. An experience that I can say made me stop and think twice about how persistent and consistent I am with some of my responsibilities in my personal life and in every day activities at work.
It was a Saturday afternoon and I decided to clean the back part of my property. My yard is about an acre and a quarter and the back quarter is hardly ever used. It’s grown up and has a lot of brush that needs attending. I mow this area and I weed eat the brush occasionally, but not as often as I probably should. I hardly weed out the vines wrapping their way up the trees. I’ve probably knocked them down or cut them back once or twice since we’ve been on property, but I normally just weed eat and mow and that’s about it.
As I was contemplating what I wanted to do, I found myself staring at the trees and ground around them. I noticed they had vines growing out of them, the grass and weeds are knee high, and the wild bushes need to be cut back something crazy. I really didn’t realize just how bad I had let it go, but because it was green and it “appeared” to be okay I didn’t think it was that bad. Well, I was wrong. The closer I got to the area I noticed it looked horrible and needed attention. So, I started cleaning.
I weeded the high grass and cut down the underbrush using a weed-eater. I started cleaning up the vines by cutting them down with a machete. But I thought, I need to clean them out of the trees. I procrastinated this plan, because I thought the vines were helping the tree. Again, I was wrong.
I Googled “do vines help trees”? The answer I got wasn’t one of surprise, because I really knew what it was going to say. I just didn’t want to believe it. Vines strangle, smother and kill trees. The vines block the sun from providing the energy the tree needs to survive. The vines get all the vitamins it needs to be healthy, which is why the flowers are blooming and the vines are so green. This means I needed to take action and get the vines out of the tree. So, I started the process of pulling them down.
My friends, that was a job! I tried pulling the vines together in a bundle. I thought, surely, I can pull them down with no problem. So, I pulled and pulled and pulled some-more, but nothing happened. The tree would shake, bend and a few limbs would fall out, but the vines stayed in place. Now it had become a task and a challenge, and one I was not going to allow the vine to win!
I sat down to catch my breath and as I sat there, I kept asking myself, why did you let it get this way? How could I let this happen to my yard and how could I get this cleaned up and corrected so it would never happen again? I wanted to quit and give up, but I knew that wasn’t a good option. If I quit, the yard would look terrible and the possibility of damage to my yard could develop. I couldn’t give up and let those vines win.
As I sat there pondering how I was going to get the vines down, it hit me. Instead of pulling on all the vines at once, just pull one vine at a time. So I tried it. It was a bit of a struggle at first, but after just a few pulls, the vine released from the branch. I then grabbed another one and did the same thing. I pulled and tugged as hard as I could. After just few tugs, the vine released and pulled out with ease. I followed that routine for the rest of the evening and pulled out all the vines from the trees. I did have a bit of a struggle with some, but for the most part, it was easy pulling.
You’re probably wondering, when did this eye-opening experience happen? Remember when I asked myself, “Why did you let it get this way”? I answered that question while I was taking a break. Had you been more consistent with the cleaning of the property, this would have never happened.
My lack of constant work in the yard caused the weeds to grow too high and the wild brush to overtake the property. My lack of constant work to control the vines caused them to grow and take over, which was killing the trees. I just didn’t realize it until it was almost too late. The last thing I needed was for a tree to fall, causing damage to the yard or even the house. If I didn’t get this under control something terrible could happen, and I didn’t want that at all.
We need to apply this concept of consistency to other areas of our life, too. When we’re inconsistent we allow things to grow that may be hard to bring back under control. I see the affects of inconsistency every day. We have to stay consistent with “maintaining” if we want to keep out the overtaking issues that can bring damage or destruction.
What are some things that you’ve allowed to go unattended? What damage has it caused? How hard do you think it would be to clean up the “vines” that have grown? When do you think you could start the clean up process? Don’t put it off to much longer. The longer you wait, the harder it is to pull down the growing vines that are smothering “LIFE” from the thing you want to see grow and prosper.
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