My Mother's Advice

My mom is full of good advice, but there was one bit of advice she gave me that really made an impact. It was early in my marriage and Charlie and I were going through a rough patch. She knew I was at the end of my rope with him. She told me that marriage was not easy. It, in fact, would be one of the hardest things that I'd work on over a long period of my life, because it is ever-changing.


My mom told me to look at my marriage, if you will, like a garden. When it first starts, it is beautiful. You want to smell and admire every nook and corner.


Although, if you do not take care of your garden, it gets over grown with weeds and chokes out what you have planted. Weeds grow thickly where they are unwanted and choke out more desirable plants. You need to clear or remove weeds that become harmful to your garden. You need to get rid of these troublemakers. If you do not tend to it ...


You won't be able to admire the blooms...


You have to pull the dead blooms so that there will be new ones.


You may have to train vines to grow a certain way.


You would need to make sure that you fertilize to enrich your land.


Make sure there is adequate light for certain plants to grow or not to get burnt.


You would need to cultivate to encourage new growth or to improve and refine areas of your garden. And water just enough for proper growth. You water too much, it becomes waterlogged. Plants will become unmanageable or the roots will get rotten and you will lose what you have planted.


You would need to sow seed for new growth.


You would need to prune the unwanted parts so that areas would grow stronger.


You would have to use certain pesticide to get rid of unwanted pests safely.

I listen to my mom talk about this garden of marriage. We talked about how you can apply this to any relationship that you have. I have seen my mom work in her garden. She has come in with scrapes on her arms, dirt under her nails, sweat on her brow and sometimes out of breath. She has gotten up very early in the morning to tend to her garden by meeting the snails that would munch for breakfast. It is hard work. But when you've finished working, for the day, you can always sit in your garden and you appreciate the beauty in it so much more. Relationships of any kind do not come easy. You get out what you put into them.

I have told my children the advice my mom had given me.

Thank You Mom!