Member Log InEver found yourself in a situation or a relationship that, no matter how you may have assessed it, the situation or relationship just doesn’t seem to be working out? Despite what we may think of as our best effort, it just seems that a brick wall stands in the way of continuation, let alone progress. I have experienced this in professional relationships with colleagues, relationships with patients, and with staff. It also happens in personal relationships. Time and life events change us. We can be pruned.
For many of us, such circumstances cause us to put our heads down and repeatedly butt the proverbial brick wall that has developed, in an effort to make something unworkable become miraculously “okay.” You know the lesson about doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Often we simply end up with bruised heads. The situation/relationship needs pruning. Perhaps more importantly, we need pruning. Our heads need a break.
Jesus spoke of pruning plants in His parables. He spoke of himself as the true vine and we the branches. He told his disciples that His Father is the vine grower. (John 15:1-3)
I once thought of pruning as simply lopping off dead branches. I was a farm kid. This is what I learned. While the lopping of dead branches is part of the process, “pruning” to a vinedresser means to “tend to” the plant; it is “to care for” the plant; to “dress” it, or trim its foliage, so that it will grow better and produce better fruit. These are warm terms, loving terms, and terms of tenderness, much deeper than lopping dead stuff away. The focus is to make the plant better!
I don’t know about you but, in my experience, addressing a difficult relationship, whether with a friend, co-worker, patient, or other acquaintance, or confronting a situation in life that is stagnant at best and unhealthy at worst often feels anything other than “tender," much less "warm." I do not often think of confronting a problem as “dressing” it. It feels more like ripping it up by the roots and casting it away. Or lopping off a dead branch, as I once thought. Maybe I’ve just never before realized the meaning of the verb, to prune.
Pruning is lovingly painful.
In the human experience, the act of pruning improves not only the pruned, but also the pruner. There is always room for new growth in all of us, and ours is but to anticipate God’s infinite mercy to feed us as that new growth begins to occur. It cannot happen until we cut loose of the old. Sometimes the pruning process results in the end of a relationship. This is tough.
We are most buoyed through such trials by trusting that not only will God care for us, but He will care as much for those from whom we separate. It helps us to ask Him to do so. "That others may become holier than me, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Jesus, grant me the grace to desire it." (From the Litany of Humility)
There are, of course, inseparable relationships with spouses, sons, and daughters that also require pruning. It does not mean in these cases that, in the act of pruning, the relationship ends; though there may be a period of time when personal spaces may temporarily enlarge and extra care is needed as new growth occurs. Pruning is a loving action that, when carried out with tenderness, becomes an act through which God’s mercy can reach and heal us. We grow.
Fall is the season for pruning. If we're focused on our response to the vocational call to holiness, we're going to subject ourselves to pruning and being pruned. Lord, help me to follow your example as the Eternal Vinedresser, as I find myself tending to my earthly relationships. Help me to manage my pruning tasks with the same gentleness with which You have pruned me. Help me to prune, even when I fear the pain that will follow, as You prune me. Bless those who, through pruning, may separate from me. Nourish them tenderly. Make me docile to the pruning I need so that I can be a better person.
And thank You, Lord, for all that You have done for me!
