So - I have these roses in my yard that I haven’t pruned…ever…(one day I’ll get good at that…) and they are fairly small. They do produce some beautiful roses here and there, but they haven’t grown like I know they could if they were taken care of properly. I know they have potential, but I just haven’t made them a priority - in all honesty, it’s rather miraculous they are still alive.
Now - my roses, if they could talk, might be thanking me for not pruning them. They might be excited that I never cut them back and just let them be “free range” roses that produce a pretty flower every now and then. But, in my neglect, while I’ve sentenced them to a life of comfort, I’ve also sentenced them to a life of unrealized potential. They will only ever be small rose bushes that never bloom like knockout roses are made to bloom. They’ll never produce the number of roses they could because the dead is never cut away. Instead, they will spend their precious resources trying to hold on to a dead or dieing limb that will never be able to produce anything.
One of the bushes I have though is significantly larger than the others. Overall, it’s had the same neglect from me as the others. Except, last year, the guy who helped me plant them was weed eating around the yard and wasn’t paying much attention and took the weed eater to my bush and cut away almost all of the stems. I remember crying about it because I thought, there’s no way we will ever have plants that grow and flourish here in this yard if I can’t even keep one measly rose bush from trauma…But the craziest thing happened - even though it was pruned in the most barbaric way possible, it has grown and flourished. It has 3 times the number of leaves as the others and almost always has more blooms. I was ready to give up on it because I thought it had suffered too much trauma to ever survive, but here it is flourishing like none of the others.
Here’s the thing. Pruning is not punishment. I’ll say it again for those in the back…
Pruning is not punishment
I’m in a book launch team for Mary Marantz’s new book coming out (go preorder it now - it’s amazing so far!) and Mary shared this concept with the team yesterday and I’ve been mulling the concept over and over in my mind since.
To paraphrase what she shared:
Pruning is not punishment - we are not punishing the hydrangeas or trees when we prune them. We are preparing them for the next season. Preparing them for new growth. For what we know that they are capable of and of what we want to see the next time around. It’s really hard to lean into that when you’re in the middle of it - but when we look back at the evidence of what God has done in our lives - those times when the seasons have been thin and hard and stripped away and then new life comes in. We look back at the evidence to the contrary and God’s history and track record of faithfulness. And the truth is - God’s past faithfulness demands our present trust.
I thought I was in this group to support her new book because I’m very excited about it, but truthfully, sitting in this group is breathing life into me in ways I had no idea I even needed. She has such insight that feels like she’s speaking directly to me - even though we’ve never met and she has no idea who I am or what is happening in my life. Yet her words are so honest and encouraging and challenging and thought provoking.
This whole idea for me - it’s not exactly a new concept - I know that God has seasons of preparation for us where He teaches us to be faithful in the little things so that we can be faithful and useful with bigger things. But the idea that these seasons can hurt, can feel like we are forgotten - not just small beginnings - a cutting away - that implies things being taken away from us. That hurts. But it’s not punishment. It’s not some penance we have to pay or a consequence for our actions. Not only is it not any of that, it’s necessary for new seasons of growth greater than what we could imagine.
So many implications to that for me in what that looks like in the current season I’m in but also in the trusting that this is shaping me and molding me into something far greater than I could have imagined or ever been able to achieve without such a season. My only job is to be faithful in the small seasons and trust that God knows what he’s doing.
Can you relate? Do you ever feel neglected or pruned? Have you ever had a hard season or something that didn’t happen the way you thought it would, but now when you look back, you’re so glad it didn’t go the way you had planned?