Pruning

Last night I got out before dark and started pruning some bushes.  We have a Rose of Sharon bush that I transplanted from Rod's grandparents house and (what I call) a snowball bush that my parents gave us when Jared was born.  Last fall was crazy so pruning never even reached the to-do list.  They grew like crazy and were very pretty - flowering like crazy - but one in particular was out of control.  Rod referred to it as the jungle.

So I got out and started pruning.  I got thinking about if the bush was glad to get the pruning or if it was hurting from being pruned.  I determined that it will have the winter to recovery and became really excited about what it will look like next spring/summer.    As I kept hacking away at the snowball bush I thought about how God prunes us sometimes.  I thought about how the process of pruning can hurt and yet other times it can feel good to get rid of the stuff that keeps us from being who God wants us to be


I was thinking about some of my clients that I use to counsel.  I remember working with one girl in particular.  She had been abused for someting like 9 years and was just starting to address the issues that arose because of that. She said how much she just wished that she could be healed.  I told her that sometimes uses the process for a reason.  God could very well just "snap his fingers" and "prune" us but He uses the process to help mold us into the person he wants us to be.


So heres to getting the most out of the process.