What I'm learning from stickers

Our yard at our new place is humongous.  Below is a small picture of the side of the front yard.  It looks lush, healthy, and green.  Don't be fooled.  Nearly everything green in that yard is a sticker plant.  Do you guys know what stickers are?  Maybe there is a more botanically correct term for the painful and nearly impossible to get rid of little demons.  

Here is a sticker up close. They sprout barbed little seeds that stick and prick your feet or fingers.  Trouble is, if you just mow over them, you fling the seeds and that makes more stickers.  The only way to get rid of these is by digging them up, by the roots, one plant at a time. 

And that is our plan.  To dig them all up and grow real grass in our yard.  Mike and I, mostly Mike, have  spent a lot of minutes digging up sticker plants the last few weeks.  Once the ground is dry and hard(will be by July), it is super hard to pull them up by the roots. As I was plucking them up a few weeks ago, I had a thought.  A sticker plant resembles my spiritual life.  From far away, it looks so green and lush and, well, grassy!  But, get a good close look, take your shoes off and step on it, and OUCH, sticker plants!  Battling ugly hangups and sins is like battling stickers. You can't simply mow over it and cut it down short so that it looks good.  That will just produce more bad habits, hangups and sins.  And, if you leave those things too long, your heart becomes hard and dry and boy is it difficult to change at that point. True spiritual pruning requires uprooting by the roots.  It is hard and laborious.  My ever-growing sticker thatch is made up of a short-temper, critical spirit, spreading a bad report, grumbling, comparing myself to others, and envy.  I need a "sticker-ectomy"!  I want to grow the Fruit of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self-control.

And he that was sown among the thorns, this is he that heareth the word; and the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.  Matthew 22:13