Lessons From My Garden

The sun has been out and it’s finally warm enough for one of my all time favorite things to do…dig in the dirt of my garden! I love the smell of the grass as I’m mowing and the amazing fragrance of my flowers as I clean up the old blooms to make way for the new.

Last season I planted some ground cover on a small hillside in my backyard. It was supposed to be hardy, would hold the hillside together through rain and mud and had the sweetest little white flowers that would bloom in the spring. I prepped my soil, dug the holes for the new plants to the appropriate depth and planted the little seedlings at just the right distances apart from each other. Then I watered, kept watch over too much sun, too many birds and bugs, and plucked out the tiny weeds just as they began to sprout. Basically I babied those plants with the expectation of a hillside covered with small green clover-like leaves and beautiful tiny white flowers come spring.

But nothing happened. The plants didn’t spread like they were supposed to. They seemed to die off a few at a time so that every week I had fewer and fewer of them still chugging along on my hill. I got discouraged and chalked it up to too much sun in some spots and too much shade in others. Maybe I just bought flats of inferior plants from the local nursery. Or maybe I just simply chose the wrong plant for that particular spot in my yard.

So I did what most gardeners do; I decided I would just let them go and when it was planting season I’d choose a different and better suited plant. It was too exhausting to keep spending my time pulling weeds in an area that wasn’t going to grow well anyway.

This past weekend the sun was out, the ground was dry enough after all the crazy rain we’ve gotten and it was time to tackle my hill. I suited up in my finest home gardener ensemble – yoga pants, t-shirt, boots and baseball cap – grabbed my bucket, garden gloves and small spade and planted myself in the middle of the hillside, surrounded by dirt and weeds.

As I started pulling and clearing, I discovered that a few of my beloved little plants seemed to have survived my neglect! So I was more careful as I tugged at the weeds, making sure I left the actual plant in good condition. I dug, and weeded and moved along the hillside and found an entire section where my plant was growing happily! I just hadn’t been able to see it through all the weeds. And yes, it took time to pull those weeds, but it wasn’t as hard as I had imagined it would be had I simply kept up with my ongoing task of weeding.

I thought, that’s a pretty good analogy for our spiritual lives. It’s so easy to give up when it appears things aren’t going as I planned. I always start out all gun ho but if I don’t see immediate results, I lose interest, feel like it just isn’t working or I give up entirely and start over.

But more often than not, God has continued to nurture my soul under the surface. The messages I hear each Sunday somehow gets through the weeds of every-day-ness and are able to take root. The words I read every day in my Bible have planted God’s love deep in my heart. There is work to be done to clear those weeds away, but I’m sure God smiles when those weeds of worry and meanness and self absorption are gone and the simple beauty of His love and spiritual growth can be seen underneath. Just like I smiled every time I discovered another plant had survived!

Just as I was patting myself on the back for another insightful observation about life and my garden, I came to a section under my favorite tree, Mabel. I don’t name all my trees, but Mabel is different. She is a beautiful Japanese Maple tree that sits in a very special location of my yard. She can be seen from my kitchen window, my sun room and is the shade near my covered patio that keeps that part of my yard cool, no matter the temperature. Her leaves change color, just like the trees I love in the midwest. I normally take very good care of Mabel, because she’s my favorite. (Don’t tell the other plants!) But during the rainy season, the weeds had completely engulfed the ground cover I had planted under her branches.

As I started pulling, I thought for certain there was no way any of the original plant could still be there. There’s no way it could have survived the large, invasive weeds that grew willy nilly all over that area. So I pulled, and tugged. It was crazy hard work! After a while I started to notice that some of what I was pulling up was actually the roots of the weeds that had completely intertwined with the roots of my little plants! Not only had the weeds gotten in and around the new plants like they had on the other part of the hill, they had actually taken over the root system of the plants! The beautiful little flowering ground cover I wanted for my garden had turned into the weeds that made it all ugly and out of control! Maybe you’ve seen that before in your own gardens, but this was new to me.

I felt a sense of sadness that there are times when, if the weeds of sin are allowed to stay and flourish, there may be no turning back. There are times that the sin and the sinner can no longer be separated. I know from experience that although God forgives my sin, He also allows me to live with the consequences of my bad choices. I started to pray.

God, please forgive me for all the little things that I let slide because I’m either too busy to deal with them or that I feel are so small and inconsequential that it won’t really matter if I just sweep them under the rug to ignore. Don’t leave me in the weeds of sin. Remind me, Lord, that you care about every single thing in my life and that it may be the tiniest thing You are wanting me to get rid of now before it becomes something large and overwhelming later. Thank you for your crazy, relentless love!!!

Do you want to know something utterly amazing? As soon as I finished my prayer, I wasn’t sad. I kept at it – tugging, digging – getting rid of all traces of every weed even when it meant tossing out part of the root of the original plant. Do you know what I discovered at the end of my weeding session? There was a small, very tough little section of my original plant left under Mabel! It had survived and was hidden under the weeds. Somehow this little patch of green hadn’t been swallowed up by the surrounding weeds.

God had left me with a precious reminder that His heart is for me to feel His love in everything. His desire is for me to have hope, even when it feels like I’ve lost everything and the world says to just give up. He wants to do the hard work of tossing out the sin in my life, even if it means giving up something I thought I needed. Like the tiny remnant of Israel, God had cleared away the bad to make way for the new to flourish!

I’m thankful for the lessons God shows me through everyday things like weeding my garden! I suppose I will continue to learn new things and find new ways that God shows how much He loves me. He is such a good God! My job is to keep my eyes open and get rid of the weeds as soon as they make themselves known. When I clear my heart of selfishness there is room for the love God shows me each and every day!

Thank you, Lord, for not giving up on me and leaving me stuck in the weeds forever!