Gardening

I've been thinking lately of my life as a garden. I spent a lot of months, probably even more than a year thinking "if I just do this, then maybe I'll grow faster. If I could just figure out the magic formula, then I would be healed by now." However, through this journey, I have been given treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places. I would not give those treasures up if my life depended on it. They were not always "given" the easy way, and sometimes I did not want to receive them at all, but nonetheless, they are tremendously valuable to me.

Accepting that life is a process, not an event, has drastically changed my pace and perspective. I give myself time to rest- and I give myself lots of it. I'm not nearly as grumpy. I can relax at the end of the day because I know that God is working in me, leading me on, helping me to learn through the daily events of my life. He knows I'm anxious to see the end and what the view will be like from wherever that is, but I find that as I've given up the "when will I get there?" mentality, I am experiencing much more of Him in the now, and it is healing my heart.

Several years ago, some months after my dad had been diagnosed with brain cancer, and my mom's bad behavior was just starting to get the better of me, the Lord showed me a picture during my devotions. It was a picture of Jesus, and he was just going to town on a garden, ripping out weeds like nobody's business- and he was JOYFUL about His work. I had an understanding that He was about to do some serious work on my "garden", although I didn't know what that would look like, or how dreadful the process would be.

It was just shortly after then that I began to fall apart, piece by piece, until everything comfortable and solid in my life was just gone. Well, not completely, but pretty darn close.  It was an ugly and very uncomfortable, broken season of my life- one that I pray I never have to endure again. However, God was doing something profound and was dredging up some nasty weeds that would continue to choke the life out of anything good that wanted to grow there if not removed.

If I were to be honest, I would say that for the last few years I've been ashamed of the shape my garden is in. I don't want people to know how broken I've been. I'm afraid to show them that my garden has no living plants growing in it. I'm afraid they'll think I'm a heathen or something ridiculous like that. But,  it's not my fault that my garden is empty- I just allowed the gardener to do what He wanted, and before I knew it, I looked out on a barren, tilled up ground with a big ole pile of weeds at the end just waiting to decompose.

I was thinking how often we judge others without knowing what is really going on in their lives. I'm sure if people judged my garden by the flowers, I'd come up pretty short of any awards. Someday, there will be a beautiful garden, it just wont be today. Does that diminish the value of unplotted soil? I don't think so. The preparation taken in planting and weeding and watering the garden will determine how big and beautiful that garden becomes.

So, don't hate the process- relax in it. God is in the process. And don't judge other people's gardens. If God has not made you privy to their process, then just pray and love them through it- but don't judge. You don't know what the gardener has planned for them ; )