When Weeds Teach You Life Lessons

Hi all!

I have made it to Trujillo after a night spent in Lima and a day-long bus ride. We are working with Inca Link in Trujillo. They serve their community in many different ways which you can read more about here.

Inka Thaki is a sports-based ministry that uses sports such as floorball (like street hockey), sand boarding, skateboarding and soccer to minister to youth in the area. They are looking to expand and to set up rope courses and rock walls and more to have sports camps. As a part of this, we are preparing a decent-sized field by pulling all the weeds, and there are a lot of them.

Here’s what I’ve learned while pulling weeds:

• Sometimes weeds don’t look like weeds. Sometimes they fool you into thinking they should be there. Sometimes they are even pretty with flowers and such.
• No matter what they look like they still have to be pulled.
• Oftentimes the roots aren’t necessarily strong, but they are deep. And deep roots are extremely difficult to pull out.
• Sometimes you need tools, shovels or pickaxes, that do more damage to the grass you want to keep but serve the purpose of removing the weed.
• Sometimes you think you’ve pulled out the weed, but really the stem broke and the root is still way down in there, and it will likely grow back. The root still needs to be removed, again you might need to get out the tools.

Preparing a field is not easy.  It’s not the most fun task, and it definitely doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process, but a necessary one to prepare for what comes next (in this case the fun of ropes courses and sports camps). The fruits of the labor won’t be seen until much later, but the preparation and weed pulling is an essential step.

Here’s what the Lord is teaching me through this process:

• There are many lies the world has told us, or that we’ve told ourselves that are like weeds.
• Sometimes these lies look pretty, or seem good, but ultimately are still weeds and still need to be removed.
• They may be buried deep within our hearts. Lies aren’t strong in and of themselves because they hold no power over us, but maybe they have been there long enough to grow deep roots, which can make them difficult to remove.
• Uprooting these lies might require some tools or work that will cause some pain before healing comes.
• Sometimes we think we’ve uprooted or overcome a specific lie or doubt, only for it to be brought back up again. It may be that we didn’t actually remove the root, we only thought we did, and it grew right back.
• Uprooting these lies will take time. It won’t happen overnight, but it is essential to prepare for the fruit that is to come.

Love you all, 

Kayla