Pruning with a Purpose

The flower beds beckon my name in the spring when the air is crisp and the birds chirp with delight. Neglect for the inside of my home is at an all time high when the weather is beautiful enough to spend an entire day working in the yard.

I recently planted six additional trees around my home and property and expanded the flowers beds for more flourishing bushes to bloom throughout the year. Large planters now adore the newly added patio with annuals to showcase the color of summer. 

While on my daily routine of walking the half-mile loop around the property, I thought more about what needed pruning around the house and farm. There are flower bushes that need to be cut back, over 100- year-old trees that need some huge branches to be cut away, and the new trees need their lower trunks trimmed.

The process of pruning makes the plants or trees look uglier for a season until the new growth begins to flourish. The place where the cut happened leaves a mark, and the vegetation has to work to scab over the wound in order to protect the remainder of itself. Looking closely, a mark can always been seen where the pruning has taken place. For my newer trees, those lower branches need to be cut to allow the tree to puts its energy in reaching its full height. All the cutting of dead or overgrown branches is to increase growth and beauty.

We humans experience seasons of pruning in our lives, although we are not fond of the process. We want to hold on to all those things that have been an off shoot of our lives, even though collectively they get too large to handle. They may have had a purpose at one season of our lives, but in the next season, it is not something we should be holding onto.

There are times when we need to cut back on those activities – soccer teams, private pitching lessons, volunteering – which in themselves may be good, but when looking at the total health of the person, we realize something has to go. During this pandemic, we saw many things that changed in our personal lives and in our loved one’s lives. Jobs were lost, activities were shut down, church doors were closed, relationships waned, and we were cut back to simply the basics of what really mattered.

But it was hard. It was hard not to go to church, go out to eat, attend ballgames and concerts, and travel long distances to see our loved ones. However, maybe it is what we needed to realize those extra limbs and branches – and even those with pretty flowers on them – needed to go in order for a healthier person to blossom in the next season. Sometimes the extra activities in our lives need to be pruned to grow toward the heavens to reach our potential.

For me, I do not like that my children are all out of the house (although much of their stuff remains), and I do not like that it’s my two pups and a cat that keep me company around the farm when I was used to a much more beautifully chaotic lifestyle. But I do know there is a season for everything, and during this season I am learning to be alone, learning to rest and allow my body and heart to continue to heal, and spending time seeking what next steps I will take on this journey called life.

The pruning season is not fun, in fact, it is quite painful. There are scars from where things have been cut away in my life, literally and figuratively. I can count the scars on my left ankle from the incisions of three surgeries, but no one can see the scars on my heart which many times ache more painfully than my physical ones.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  John 15:2

As Jesus had to die on the cross so we can live eternally with Him, God will allow things to be cut away in our lives so we have a more beautiful life that points upward to Him.

Photo: Easter morning 2011, hiking in the Cohutta Wilderness