In spring and summer weeds pop up all over our yard. It is a never-ending battle with nature to keep these pesky plants from taking root in our flowerbeds. Each rain we get causes more of them to appear in areas we have just cleared.

As a Christian, I can point to the fact that I continue to be confronted with “weeds” that affect my spiritual life, as well. The Bible points out that my anger is not godly, and that I need to get rid of this by becoming meek. I have also discovered that there are “weeds” that needed to be eradicated in our relationship with our adopted children. One was the assumption that our children would understand what we were doing in adopting them. They did not.

The struggles that we had in rearing our children culminated in our having to put one in residential care for a year so that he could deal with the emotional issues that he was facing. At this point, I felt crushed as a parent, and felt as though I had failed. The only way that we could deal with the rejection that we felt was to cry out to God in prayer, asking Him to intervene in our children’s lives. They desperately wanted the acceptance of their peers, and that drove them to do things that were against our standards. Only when they matured further did they repent of what they had done and now seek to please God.

I realized that there was no benefit to covering up the weeds or pretending that they did not exist. They just continued to spread, and would ending up taking over the garden of our children’s lives if not eliminated. Just like weeding in a garden, it would take continued hard work throughout this season in their lives and would be painful. And I would have to admit that there were weeds in my own life as well and be willing to ask their forgiveness when I had done what was wrong.

Have you found yourself in a season of “weeds” in your relationship with your child(ren)? Is it time to reboot in order to pull the weeds out of your and their lives? If you have done so, please feel free to add your comments to the comment box below.