Style
Lifestyle, Motherhood
Faith
I Am A Garden & So Are You
Jul 28, 2024
If you’ve read any of my past work—whether a blog post or book—you know that I’m continuously inspired by nature. Today, I’m interested in the duality of a garden, and of a human’s life.
Teeming with vitality and waywardness, an unruly yet tenacious space, I am a garden and a garden is me. So are you. Tiny green buds sprouting from every corner within us, brimming with potential. If fostered correctly, they will stretch out of infancy and bloom. With time, the shy little buds will grow into fully flowering adult plants, mature and bursting of colors only imagined in heaven.
Of course, the opposite is also true. If those same tender buds within us are left disrespectfully shriveled in isolation, well, they will lead a slow decline. In the enveloping darkness, they will fade, weary of trying. The once warm potential inside will grow cold. And although we’re freezing, we’re no longer a garden, but a desert. A desperate wasteland of missed possibilities.
C.S. Lewis states, “It is no disparagement to a garden to say that it will not fence and weed itself, nor prune its own fruit trees, nor roll and cut its own lawns. A garden is a good thing but that is not the sort of goodness it has. It will remain a garden, as distinct from a wilderness, only if someone does all these things to it. The very fact that it needs constant weeding and pruning bears witness to that glory.”
I’m learning that a partnership with God is a 50/50 choice. We choose Him, daily. He chooses us, always. We lean into His light and grace and abundance, and He waters us in return. We love His decrees of discipline and His gentle pruning feeds us, promising a refinement that we could never have acquired on our own. The difference between a garden and a wilderness is that extra helping hand. So today I thank the Lord for His attentive presence in my life, and for the progress we’ve made together.
