There is a time to plant and a time to uproot within life’s garden. Each time can be exhilarating, painful, anxiety provoking and filled with guilt. But God won’t leave us alone in our time.
Being let go from my executive role with a sizeable multi-location hospital system in the Northeast sent me reeling into an emotional abyss of shame, guilt, anger, and fear. I felt violated and targeted for things that I knew were untrue. I was furious for being unjustly removed. I felt terrified for our household’s financial future. And I was shamed over the stigma of having been fired.
Even though that was decades ago, I can still feel the scar.
On that late September day, as I walked from the office to my car in the hospital’s parking lot, what I was experiencing did not align with the weather surrounding me. My world was grey and stormy, chaotic and threatening. Yet, the early autumn sky was clear and blue, the air crisp, the colors vibrant.
For the next two weeks, I proceeded to hole up in my kitchen armchair with tea and blankets. Every day in sweats and headbands, I stared out at the miserably beautiful weather that refused to participate in my mood.
Until a friend showed up with tools. Garden tools.
Garden Prayers
Then we dug in the dirt, its rich dark loom. Pulling old plants by their roots, clipping vines for over-wintering, pruning bushes, exterminating weeds, and harvesting late-to-the-party carrots and beets. For days on end, I spent my mornings with the warmth of that glorious sun on my back, bent over with my fingers deep into the velvet sponginess of the earth, still fragrant with the memories of the summer’s yield, while my afternoons were spent gathering up the chafe and brush, burning twigs and leaves, and gently cleansing tools. I was ending one season of growing and preparing for another.
As I knelt in that dirt before my God, day after day, toiling in his creation, I prayed. I prayed for comfort in my pain. I prayed for patience in my anxiety. I prayed for insight for my purpose. And wisdom for my future. I prayed for absolution from my shame. I prayed for another day. Another chance. Another moment of happiness.
But God provided me with all of that and more. Not by giving me a new job. But by inviting me into his experience of rebirth. In those six weeks of prayer with God, nurturing my garden for food for my family for the next season, I found peace. In tending to the preparation for the future sustenance of those I love, I found his presence. By inviting me in to SEE and EXPERIENCE his work in the moment, the work he was already doing in closing down one season – in my life and in my garden- God opened my eyes to see and my heart to say YES to stepping into his invitation to stop directing and controlling and simply to be – with him. To be present with his great I AM. There in the garden of his work. My garden. My Life.
In that period, a great peace settled over my soul. The peace that resembles the sleeping loom of my vegetable garden after the fall harvest has finally been reaped, and the beds put to sleep. The peace of my furrowed rows blanketed with a light frost on a December morning, the soil resting in the knowledge that its time will come again- to work hard, to nourish, and to produce. God’s invitation to experience him in my garden, even as it grew fallow, was painful but productive, for he blessed me with Himself. And he is enough.
Further Reading
Resources:
Garden Tools Worth Investing In
Ratatouille from your Garden Harvest
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