Gardening is on my mind these days. We had a couple of days of 45-degree weather and thanks to all this below freezing Montana weather, I start thinking it’s practically Summer. This morning we’re back in the 30s with big, fluffy snowflakes tumbling down but it hasn’t stopped me from longing for my garden. This time of year, I see all the seed orders going in, friends growing seedlings indoors, others plotting out the layout of their garden, and I want to be there too.
Last year around this time, we had just moved to a farm with a good-sized garden plot, probably at least a ¼ acre, and a small orchard of about 20 trees. I was in love. I started planning the garden, learning to prune fruit trees, buying stacks of seeds, and starting way too many seedlings. I started more than 60 tomatoes, it was a bit ridiculous, particularly because I was 6 months pregnant and due on the dot of the planting date in our gardening zone, not to mention I had 3 other small boys ages 5 and under.
So, what did I do? I went forward anyway, desperately planning this garden, and far overreaching my capabilities in that season. I so deeply wanted this to work that I ignored all the signs saying I needed patience more than I needed produce.
Ah patience, the virtue with which I have the greatest love/hate relationship. Occasionally I pray for patience but then I stop trusting in God’s goodness and I become afraid of what I might need to change in my own heart for that patience to take root.
Here I am, in a different season, a different state even, struggling still to wait on God’s timing.
I thought I would have that garden plot again this spring. I thought I would be feeding my chickens through the winter and gathering up a few more chicks to add to my flock. I thought we would live on that farm indefinitely. I thought it was where we were meant to be because when we moved in there, I felt home for the first time in a very long while. I did not want to leave. It didn’t matter if we were just renting, it was home.
In a quick turn-around, we decided and moved to Montana in 2 months. It felt and still feels too fast, like whiplash on settling in. I brought my last baby home to that house, and we will never live there again. It feels a little like the winter of the garden; we strip it clean to start over fresh in the spring. A fresh slate, that’s what I gain every time we move, and yet these days all I want is roots running deep.
The garden in the summer is so peaceful and warm and beautifully green, it’s easy to forget the days when it’s brown and muddy, buried by snow, the seeds that must die in order to produce the bounty of summer. I find it easy too, forgetting all we must experience for our character and Godly faith to grow, all the blessings growing from difficulties.
This is home too. I don’t have a garden space and I certainly won’t be starting 60 tomatoes, but I will be planting a container garden for the first time. It’s a new experience and new growing, no lush greenery flowing over beautifully laid out rows this year, but that does not mean it isn’t coming. As Ruth Chou Simons says, “You don’t have to be blooming to be growing.” So, I’ll take my roots growing down deep in faith, my heart softening, and my character building while I wait on God’s timing.
I choose to learn patience here. I choose to listen and to trust, even if it’s uncomfortable, the growing of that patience will be beautiful. Sister don’t lose heart because you are not where you want to be yet. God’s timing is good, and you will bloom in it. Stay the course, winter is always followed by spring and the garden always blooms again.
My garden last year was a mess. 6-weeks of c-section recovery and a month or two of temps too hot outside for a newborn baby, insured a lack of care for those growing plants, leaving us with little to show other than a plot full of weeds. I think I knew in my heart that’s how it would go. I knew better yet chose my own headstrong way. But God does not leave us in our disgrace or wallowing in our failures after going our own way. There is always hope, there is always a new spring. I am learning to preach to my own heart, knowing the immediacy of the dreams I carry is so much less important than the plan God will carry out with those dreams if only I will open my clenched fists and offer them up.
Offering up is hard. My heart shrinks back from the perceived loss of control, my desperate desire to make the plan work the way I want it to, even if the season is not right.
In the end, gardening is all about trust; we trust the seeds we plant, the water, the sun, will cause the seeds to grow. To look for certainty, to dig up the seeds to check if they are germinating, is to kill the very thing we sought to grow.
Isn’t it the same in our own hearts?
To micromanage the growth of our characters, the seeds we have asked God to carefully tend in our lives, is to defeat the very grace of learning to trust in God. It is to continue relying on ourselves, so afraid to let go of control, we cannot allow the very best good to grow in us.
I long for nothing more than for Jesus to grow a garden in me, patience, self-control, kindness, goodness, faith. For Him to do so I am letting go of the control I’ve fought for so long. I am not the Master of my life, He is. I will trust and move to seek Him first, knowing He is working for my good at all times and in all ways. I encourage you to as well. Let’s lean in to the discomfort and walk forward into this season with grace.