Here's the thing about that thistle. It didn't ask permission to be in our yard. Weeds never do. A bird dropped a seed, or the wind carried one in, and it landed in good soil, soil we had tilled and fertilized and mulched for other things, and it started to grow.
That part isn't your fault. Seeds land in every life. Nobody chooses what blows into their yard.
But a seed can only do so much on its own. What turned that seed into a four-foot monster with purple blossoms was a little girl with a watering can, faithfully, innocently, giving it a drink every single day.
The seed was free. The size of it was paid for.
So what counts as water?
Attention is water. Whatever you think about grows.
Time is water. Whatever fills your hours puts down roots.
Words are water. The things you say out loud — about your boss, your spouse, yourself — don't just describe your life. They water parts of it.
Imagination is water. Every time you rehearse the argument, replay the injury, run the disaster scenario one more time. You're not just remembering. You're out behind the house with the can, pouring.
Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, "Today I'd like to become a bitter person." Nobody plans to drift away from God. Nobody circles a date on the calendar for when the worry will take over.
It happens one thought at a time. One compromise at a time. One habit at a time. One day at a time.
Three cups of water. That's all the can held. Three cups is nothing — spill it on the driveway and it's dry in ten minutes. But three cups a day, every day, all summer?
That'll grow something taller than your kids.
And then one day you come around the back corner of your own life, and you see it — the resentment, the fear, the habit, the distance — grown up taller than you ever thought it could get, and you stand there asking the question every one of us has asked:
How did this get so big?
It got big the same way everything gets big.
Somebody's been filling the can.
"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up." (Galatians 6:9, ESV)
So, what are you watering this week?
This is an excerpt from my book, What Are You Watering?, coming soon.