Your brain is like a garden.
How many of you have a garden? Flower or vegetable? I have a garden that took off last year, we weeded it, fertilized it, watered it and gave it all the proper things it needed to thrive. I planted each plant where it would grow the best. I gave each plant space to grow and in the areas that nothing was growing yet, I went to the nursery and found beautiful baby plants and planted them in those empty spaces. Just like a garden your brain needs to be weeded and cultivated. When you intentionally plant soft grass, beautiful flowers, yummy veggies, delicious fruit trees and fresh herbs in your yard, you leave little room for massive weeds to grow. Your brain also needs intentional planting otherwise the weeds will take the opportunity to fill up the space. Your brain also needs regular maintenance just like your garden does in order to thrive.
I love my yard, I love spending lots of time there! Parker and I took the time to cultivate it and now it thrives. The maintenance we do to keep it looking awesome is very little. We try to weed it often, we dead head when we need to, and we check the sprinklers when one of the plants doesn’t look right, but mostly our flower garden thrives on its own. I like to think of my flower garden like it is a brain that has been renewed by the repentance process.
You see my yard used to be full of weeds that ran several feet deep under the earth. Pretty much every square inch of dirt was covered in weeds, they loved the space and I ignored it. I really couldn’t be mad about it, it was dry, cracked, flat dirt with nothing else in it and since I hadn’t intentionally done anything with the dirt, the weeds thought it was a good place to take up residence. When we did decide to do something with our yard, It turned out to be total gut job and it was not a fun one. We had to rip everything out, till the ground and get fresh topsoil and sprinklers. Alot of work went into preparing the ground for beautiful plants and trees to grow. We had a lot of people to help us thankfully!
Even now after all that, some of the weeds that pop up are still from the weed roots that went many feet deep. Those weeds are like the past limiting beliefs , traumas and very hard habits we developed, the things that can still get triggered if we don’t stay on top of it.
Repentance is a cleansing of our heart and mind, a desire to change and do better, to think differently and to rewire our brain in a way that helps us thrive. Repentance isn’t just for wrong doings and it isn’t a one and done sort a change, it is like my garden. My garden isn’t perfect, it’s a constant process to maintain it and make better. We fine tune it every year and there are still empty areas that need plants, but I try and go out and weed before it becomes a problem. It is a beautiful place where we like to hang out with family and friends.
This is our brains and the repentance process, it is in our best interest to weed/repent often and intentionally plant beautiful things in their place so weeds are less likely to pop back up in that spot. If we really look around us, we can see the repentance process in a lot of things. Like cleaning and maintaining your house, computers, even our bodies go through a similar process when we don’t do the proper maintenance. A garden is like our brains out in the world, a mesh of the things we intentionally plant and the things that we don’t intentionally plant. If we don’t intentionally plant beautiful things that we want to grow and cultivate, other things will naturally grow and fill the space that we never intended to be there and that don’t serve the results you hope for.
Take this time before the new spring season as an opportunity to go and evaluate your garden (brains) and see what improvements you want to do in order to make it a space that you want to spend time in. What brings you joy? Do you need to get help to create the garden of your dreams? It is absolutely worth the investment. People (parents, friends, siblings, therapists, coaches, bishops, leaders etc…) are available and willing to help you. If a person isn’t a good fit to help you create your desired results then seek other help. Lot’s of people will have an opinion on what to do with your yard, so get clear on what results you want to create, maybe a set of plans to show them. That way they can see your vision and can help you achieve your desired results. Also remember not many things are permanent in this life especially through Christ, it might be hard and it might be a pain to remove a giant fountain or jack hammer the concrete patio but if it doesn’t serve the results you are going for then don’t be afraid to put in the extra work, its worth it.
Love, Linds