With Father's Day right around the corner, I finally relented and allowed my husband to hire a landscaper to come and clean up our yard. We bought our house six years ago, and slowly but surely the yard has become clogged with weird shoots from odd plants, crab grass and prickly weeds that offend eyes and scratch legs. I kept assuming that either he or I would develop a green thumb and a love of pruning and weed pulling. Instead, we both developed wicked allergies.

The landscapers came yesterday, and trimmed the hell out of our yard. Our overgrown jungle is transformed into a bare, spartan landscape of a few decent plants, and a lot of bare dirt. The mammoth hedges that grow along our fence look raw and shocked. This is apparently what happens if you leave them to grow unchecked for years. They have been trimmed to within an inch of their lives, and the fresh white cuts at the ends of the branches are glowing like my legs after the long winter.

There is a curious sensation in my heart, looking at the open spaces. I've been blanketed in my own overgrowth for a long time. I cringe for the hedges, stripped bare and looking vunerable. But I also know that inside a month, they will be sending out fresh, green growth, and healthier than ever. Sometimes you have to take bold strokes to get the changes you want. Sometimes you have to cut off the tangles to start growing again.

This year has been tough for me. Never a natural multi-taker, I have found my limited skills stretched to the breaking point again and again. The overgrown habits of a woman with three babies at home have kept me locked away under the brambles. I have been unable to slip free of my old expectations, to step away from that identity with any grace.

I have become an early riser.
I have become more active.
I have children who challenge and out-pace me.
I have reserves of strength I never knew about.
I have new goals for myself.

I have all these things, but I have a screen of brambles keeping them hidden. I cling to my identity as a stay-at-home-mom, although I am technically working from home. I cling to my identity as a hobby-blogger, instead of the writer that I know I truly am. I cling to my identity as an overweight, lazy woman even as I take broad steps to become a fit, thin woman. I am afraid to clear the brambles and discover that I am new.

It's time to prune these overgrown expectations of my life. I'm afraid it might hurt. But I have the ability to conquer my fear. I want to let the sunlight fall on these new traits. I want to own them, and to let myself grow.