Having been a desert and city dweller for the last two decades, I haven\u2019t had much of a chance to garden before.\u00a0 However, now that my husband and I are living in the suburbs with a lawn, yard and woods (!), I\u2019ve been enjoying \u201cdecorating\u201d in nature this year.\u00a0 One of the most interesting aspects of gardening is deadheading.\u00a0 It is an awful sounding term that describes when you pluck off old flowers so that new ones have the chance to grow.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t regularly deadhead your flowers, your plants still will live, and they will look OK.\u00a0 However, if you consistently remove all the old flowers, your plants will grow exponentially.\u00a0 They will create more and more flowers and will look simply gorgeous.<\/p>\n
Just like we need to deadhead our flowers to bring out their greatest beauty, we need to prune ourselves regularly to become our best.\u00a0 One way we do that is by eliminating approaches to life that are no longer serving us.\u00a0 For example, a couple of years ago, my daughter went through a period during which she decided to \u201ctest the boundaries.\u201d\u00a0 Testing boundaries is a nice way of saying that there was a lot of back talking and arguing.\u00a0 The easiest thing I could have done would have been to continue to be the laid back mom and ignore the bad behavior.\u00a0 But the easy way out as a parent typically doesn\u2019t serve our children.\u00a0 Instead I had to prune off the idea that I could properly parent and remain my former easy-going self.\u00a0 Instead, I had to become a stricter parent.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t enjoy it, but because I gave up my old ways for new ones, my daughter now is developing into a hard-working, disciplined young woman who is a lot of fun to be around.<\/p>\n
We sometimes also need to deadhead the parts of our personalities that don\u2019t serve us.\u00a0 Some of those parts probably have never served us.\u00a0 For instance, I have a \u201cslow boil\u201d temperament.\u00a0 I\u2019ll tolerate poor behavior for quite a while and simmer with irritation.\u00a0 Then, without a lot of warning, I\u2019ll hit a boil and lose my temper.\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a good approach to human relationships.\u00a0 That is a part of my personality that I am trying to prune.\u00a0 There are all kinds of personality traits that each of us could deadhead and replace with new and better blooms. We can replace anger with patience, judgement with compassion, hopelessness with a positive outlook.\u00a0 The list goes on and on.<\/p>\n
The most difficult part of deadheading in life is when we have to eliminate those people in our lives who continually hurt us.\u00a0 That is hard.\u00a0 Human relationships are difficult to sever.\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes we can completely end those relationships, but at other times the best we can do is to distance ourselves from certain people.\u00a0 The most important thing that we can do when pruning relationships is to avoid the instinct to feel guilty.\u00a0 While some people intentionally treat us poorly, others simply do not have the skills to be in healthy relationships.\u00a0 Either way, it doesn\u2019t serve them (or us) to remain connected to them.\u00a0 Some people only learn that their behavior needs to change when the people in their lives no longer want to interact with them.<\/p>\n
I used to think that the pruning process was something that we worked on as teenagers.\u00a0 I believed that by the time we became fully formed adults, our personal pruning had ended.\u00a0 However, life experience has taught me that nothing could be farther from the truth.\u00a0 I am 46-years-old, and I continue to deadhead in all areas of my life.\u00a0 Like my flowers, I could survive and be an \u201cOK\u201d person, if I remained unchanged.\u00a0 However, if I really want to bloom and become the individual that God created me to be, then I must continually prune and refine myself as a person.\u00a0 My only hope is that at the end of my life, I will have deadheaded enough to finally become the kind of person that God hoped to create.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having been a desert and city dweller for the last two decades, I haven\u2019t had much of a chance to garden before.\u00a0 However, now that my husband and I are living in the suburbs with a lawn, yard and woods (!), I\u2019ve been enjoying \u201cdecorating\u201d in nature this year.\u00a0 One of the most interesting aspects…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":593,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n