“Gardening- the fine art of soil to soul.”

This is our sweet garden of 2021. The year of newness and life.

Last year, during an abundantly unknown season, our garden gifted us the most precious lessons filled with fruit. Not only tangible fruit, but soul fruit. Fruit we wouldn’t have gotten without the downtime of COVID and the long and sometimes tiresome days tending to it.

It was a work that felt so good, a quietness and a stillness that was impactful.

This year we chose to go about planting our garden a little differently knowing that Jasper would be entering our world during this season. We wanted the tangible fruits of it for food and for baby food for him, but knew that we wouldn’t have the time to tend to it as we had last year.

I truly have missed the tender lessons of countless hours that I spent out there last year. Today, with gratefulness, one caressed my heart.

We started the garden early. We grew plants from seed, tilled the ground, planted on hands and knees at 39 weeks pregnant. We covered the ground with paper and mulch to keep messy grass roots from popping up. The paper and mulch was a technique we tried because of our lack of time to spend weeding. Knowing that those would be the very things that would choke our precious fruits and hard work out if we didn’t do something to prevent them.

The irony is that all around these beautiful plants that are producing wonderful fruits. The messy grass roots are still coming through. They are still popping up even though we tried our best to bury them and to smother them out.

We learned one of the most powerful truths in a retreat we went to last year… “feelings buried alive will never die.” They will sneak up in the most unobvious and unwanted places when we least expect it.

So my question is… how many messy roots do we try and cover up in our lives in hopes for them to not pop up? How many lessons do we miss out on by leaving our messy roots wide open and vulnerable to the elements of life because we don’t want the work of pulling them one by one?

I thought we wouldn’t have to pull weeds this year, but we still are. Even through the beauty of our life in this season, we still are. I’m grateful for those days of lessons of pulling and surrendering.

Covering those weeds up, for a moment did make life easier, but the irony is that I truly missed the work and the quiet lessons that came with the hard work of the garden. I miss turning over soil and finding a weed growing that could grow and choke our fruit. I miss watching the sunset as I rake back hiding bugs that need to be removed. Some days we walk out there now and the bugs have caused more damage to our harvest because we weren’t carefully and daily tending to it, removing what wasn’t healthy. Just like things will do in our own lives if we let little unwanted “pests” sneak in.

Easier isn’t always more fruitful. Remember that. Sometimes the most abundant fruits come from the hardest seasons of labor.

I’m grateful for these garden lessons and I’m grateful for the sweet fruits from this garden this year even with a lack of time. I share this in hopes that whatever you may be burying, whatever you’ve kept hidden and hurt from for years, that you would be brave enough to uncover it and let the sunshine bright on it. Healing only comes when exposed to the light. The only way our garden grows and prospers is light. The only ways our lives and stories grow and prosper is light.

Happy Gardening!