War With a Bougainvillea...The Difference is More Than an Eyelash

Last year I decided this needed to go:

It's pretty, I know. But this beauty has an evil side; it has mad thorns that will rip your flesh with one wrong move. It grows like wildfire and you can't kill it. What began as a small potted gift from a friend had turned into a fiend that was destroying my fence, yard and innocent flowers.

My husband doesn't let me use electrical tools in the garden because...well, because I've given him good reason not to. So-- I have been relegated to do whatever I'd like in the garden as long as I don't sever electrical wires or send myself to the emergency room.

Every summer in the unrelenting Florida heat, I'd trim it back in tiny increments, but the more I trimmed the faster and thicker it grew... until it took over half of the backyard fence.

It was so intricately entwined and out of control that as I stood with my clippers in hand I was at a loss for where to begin. One thing about me ... If I have enough determination to begin something, I will finish it...The job will get done, come what may. That's my mom's DNA.

So, I began. Piece by piece I made my way known to this work of nature and she made hers known to me. It wasn't but 10 minutes into the job that my old tee shirt was shredded my arms and legs full of scratches.

You.....are going down...today. I muttered while the sweat poured down like rain.

Two hours later as I was still mangled in between the spiked vines, it dawned on me that many times this is how I have felt on my Christian journey:

Overwhelmed in the midst of a spiritual battle, beat up by the enemy's taunts of failure, feeling alone in the struggle, buffeted and bruised, lost in the tangled web of my own sin or the sin of others, exhausted and on the verge of ....surrender.

But God....

Two of my favorite words in Scripture, they signal a change, a contrast or a clarification of what's coming next.

You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good......

---Genesis 50:20

Suddenly, it wasn't about me anymore.. I saw the thorns on one of the cut branches I had tossed aside, and thought of His Crown;

I saw the scratches on my arms and legs and thought of His bloodied wounds,

And the abandonment He felt on the cross where He won the victory for all mankind.

Who am I that You are mindful of me O Lord?

---see Psalm 8:4

Some of the battles in my life have been outright wars...and the devil was in the details.

It was close; but that's the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die — and the difference is just an eyelash.

---Gen. Richard Sutherland

But God....is what makes all the difference.

By the way, I won the war with the Bougainvillea. It's been 2 summers...and it's never grown back.

We will win our spiritual battles too....by more than just an eyelash.

+PAX

from my blogpost