Free Metaphor
A few months back, the wife and elder daughter planted a morning glory vine. Initially, it just lay in the dirt, seemingly dormant. Then it went crazy.
Around the same time, the drought hit. We’re not big on watering and normally just let things die. This year, though, I have a mint plant I want to keep alive. For my mojitos, see.
So I started watering. The wife is pregnant, miserable, cannot drink mojitos, and thus does not care. The watering quickly spread from just the mint to all the landscaping.
And the morning glory grew.
It attempted to capture a large portion of the front yard. I rerouted it. It climbed the fence. It spread into the backyard. It attempted to overtake my heat pump. Being that we’re suffering a heat wave along with our drought, that could not stand, so I rerouted again. And again. And again.
The morning glory only blossoms in the morning, hence the name. It goes where it wants. It can be controlled, but not painlessly. The vine is barbed; that is how it latches, climbs, and conquers. The only way to control it is to grab and ignore the barbs, then move it to a new path. In the process, one might break off the blossoms, but that is only temporary. Soon, the flowers reappear. Then, though, they are where you want them.
And then someone pours round-up (or gasoline) on it and its gone.
This metaphor thing is fun, they become cliches so quickly though.
You missed an opportunity to talk about it biting into your flesh and then putting on gloves to deal with it in the future . . .
Or hacking at it with a machete. No good relationship metaphor is complete with out that imagry.
We could really run with this. The possibilities are many.
It started out so good (Gen. 2:15) before it went bad (Gen. 3:18). The work still needs to be done.