Lessons in spiritual warfare from a bougainvillea

By Caroline



One day 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 mother’s DNA.


Continue reading at Caroline's blog Bell of the Wanderer.