During covid, I stayed at the family farm. On good weather days, I walked the perimeter of the farm, occasionally waving to neighbors or laughing as their dogs protectively yelped at my heals. I started to notice a thistle growing on the back of the farm. It got bigger every day. I lone thistle, growing by itself, unencumbered. First it was barely noticeable in the grass. Then it was too my knees. When it reached the height of my waist I started to pay more attention.
My mom got frustrated at the thistle and asked my dad to chop it down. He said he would, but other priorities always took precedence. And the thistle grew. It grew to a whopping six feet and was spreading wide, its purple flowers pushing in every direction. I never saw such a tall thistle. Thistles can grow to seven feet, so this one was likely not even at its full height.
My mom, knowing that his single thistle, if not removed, would soon be twenty thistles, decided to cut it out herself. She put on thick gloves, a long-sleeved shirt, and a butcher knife from the kitchen. She walked across the field and dismembered the thistle limb by limb. Initially, my 5’7” mom looked small next to this giant alien looking thorn bush….but by the end, all that was left was a small bouquet of purple thistle flowers. She put them the thistle flowers in a vase and set them on the kitchen table. They were lovely. I also realized that it was a sort of trophy, a nod to her accomplishment.
Cut it out piece by piece
Sometimes when you want to remove something from your life, it has to be painstakingly cut out, piece by piece. Sometimes it is a toxic relationship, a lifestyle habit that is ruining your health, or something as simple as an obsession with Facebook or too much TV watching. Sometimes we have to cut-our our propensity to avoid those things that make use uncomfortable – like taking better care of our retirement investments, creating a living will, explaining to a child that not all families can afford to go to Disneyland.
Most of us have things we need to cut from our lives – these thistles that slowly grow and multiply. The things that we avoid because they are too uncomfortable to confront. The thistle in any given moment, seems small, but left unencumbered, its impact multiplies across the fields and gardens of our lives.
Conquering a habit or moving from the misery of the known to the unknown can be daunting. Taking on a six-foot thistle is not comfortable, my mom got cut a few times by the thorns despite being careful. She bled a little. But in the end the dismembered thistle lay at her feet. She won.
