 |
| my garden |
Last Spring, I planted a small
garden: two narrow raised beds with enough room for a cabbage, some basil,
carrots, red onions, three tomato plants and a few watermelon vines. I planned
and plotted, dug out and built up the beds, dumped in garden soil, nestled the
seedlings into their new home, and gave it all a healthy dousing of water.
But that was about it.
Honestly, I didn’t spend
a lot of time tending my garden. Spring got busy, and when summer rolled
around, I spent even less time in it. I watered it maybe five or six times (it
rains a lot in Northern Virginia) and weeded it less than that (though with the
new soil and the beds being raised, weeds weren’t really a problem). I pruned
it only if I had a moment when I ran outside for a handful of basil leaves.
The rain fell, the sun
shone. The months passed.
 |
| onions from my garden |
One day I carried into
the house a small fortune of tomatoes, and it dawned on me that I was akin to the
man in Jesus’
parable in Mark:
God’s kingdom is like seed thrown on a field by a man who then goes to bed and forgets about it. The seed sprouts and grows—he has no idea how it happens. The earth does it all without his help: first a green stem of grass, then a bud, then the ripened grain. When the grain is fully formed, he reaps—harvest time!
That’s how I feel about
my garden. I planted it, and then forgot about it. But the earth did it all
without my help—and I’ve been reaping the harvest. For months.
Recently, I’ve realized
that I feel the same way about my soul. The seeds of God’s kingdom grow in me, and
I have no idea how it happens. This particularly resonates with me right now because
I’m coming out of (or, at least, getting a reprieve from) a season when God’s pretty
much doing it all without much help from me.
These
last couple of years has been a bit rough. Several close family members have grappled with serious
health problems, and my
husband’s father lost his battle with bone cancer and passed away in August.
This both confronted and left me wrestling with the reality of mortality, the
fragility of life, and that we all will eventually lose those we love and leave
those we love behind.
This brought on a kind of dark night in my soul. Like that
despairing psalmist, I’ve found God hard, if not impossible, to find. I’ve lamented
that his face is hidden from me. Sometimes, I’ve wondered if he’s even there at
all.
And many of those disciplines I gravitate towards—reading scripture,
prayer, meditation, study—have brought little consolation and diminished. Even
my writing, which is a kind of public spiritual journaling, has decreased.
Yet, as I ponder my garden and soul, I see now that I’ve grown in ways I
didn’t expect. I am more profoundly aware of my flaws, fears and selfishness—and
thus more aware of my need for God. I’ve grown more appreciative of the
ordinary things. I feel more compassion towards others. My love for my children
has grown even deeper and I’ve become more patient with them (though I’m sure
they’d tell you I still have a long way to go with that one). I’m less cynical
and more hopeful about God’s people and my understanding of God’s Story and his
plan for creation has grown, too.
And I can see new disciplines have emerged in my life. I’ve craved corporate
worship, which consistently brings moments of healing and peace in ways I’ve
never experienced before. I’ve been seeking ways to help and serve others with
new intensity. I’ve started recording spiritual truths and imperatives and meditating
on them in an effort to work them down into my soul. I’m constantly hungry for
solitude, turning off music and television with more frequency so as to reduce
the noise in my life. And I’ve been simplifying things—my time, possessions, and
focus.
What astounds me about this, however, is that most of these are things
into which I put little, if any, intention or effort. Most of my growth is
fruit of seeds I didn’t even know had been planted. I find myself participating
in new disciplines I did not intentionally seek out—and in some cases, seem to practice
without knowing it. And like that farmer, it feels like I don’t know how it’s
happened.
I’ve
experienced darkness
before,
and one of my greatest consolations has been St. John of the Cross’ The Dark Night of the Soul, in which he writes
about how God changes and purifies the heart and soul during the spiritual
crises of the Dark Night of the Soul and the Dark Night of the Spirit. He
explains these seasons as ones where God, far from being absent, is so near and
his light so bright that you feel blind and wrapped in darkness. But as you wait
in this darkness, God works within you, transforming you in secret, drawing you
into a closer and deeper union with him.
Perhaps something like
this occurs in other dark times as well. Even as we fumble, God works within us
to change us into the persons he created us to be—more like his Son—even as he
draws us closer to him. It doesn’t feel like he is there; in fact, it often
feels like he is absent. Yet, somehow, he is intimately near.
My pastor says, “With
Jesus, every death is a resurrection.” With God, every broken part of this
world and every flaw or bent part of us is a seed ready to die so new life can
grow. We, like the farmer, don't understand how it happens. God, like the earth, does it all. This is one of God’s truths that, in the darkness, is slowly becoming my
experience. It is a seed whose roots are working their way through my being.