God loves things that grow

When we first moved into our new home, our backyard was a bit neglected. It hadn’t seen children for quite some time, and had forgotten its usefulness. So we decided to give it a facelift. First and foremost, we needed a garden.

Part of the reason was that our little Liz had had a hard time with the move. There were days where I was sure that she was not okay, and that she would need a therapist to treat her for depression. Turns out that Ben is also a part-time therapist. Okay… well, not really. But he does have a talent for helping people process their emotions, and feel better about themselves and about life. He’s helped me throughout my depression. He’s been a wonderful counselor to many of his friends. And he was able to help Liz, too.

Another source of support and wisdom, though, came from my mom. As I was chatting with her one day about what to do to help Liz be happy, she gave me some sound advice. “Give her something to take care of. Something she has some ownership over. Let’s plant a garden and have her help us.”

Her wisdom reminded me of a quote from one of my favorite books, “The Hiding Place,” by Corrie ten Boom. Corrie was a woman who lived through the Holocaust. She had been in a concentration camp and had seen many horrible things, including the death of her beloved father and her sister, Betsie.

Years after leaving the concentration camp, Corrie decided to open a sanctuary, a place for people to heal their emotional and mental hurts. Part of her inspiration for the sanctuary came from something her sister had told her while they were in the camp, before she died. She told Corrie to help people grow gardens.

“It will be so good for them… watching things grow. People can learn to love from flowers.”

It sounds beautiful, right? Well, it is! But… it’s not as easy as it sounds. I remember, when I was a newlywed, simply wanting to keep a plant alive. I think that all young married people who try to grow plants secretly do it so they can prove they’re capable of a more time-consuming (and adorable🤱🏽) responsibility.

Well… let’s just say that if my family planning decisions had been held to that standard, we would be a few years (and children) behind where we are now. I purchased a cilantro plant to start; I love using cilantro in my cooking. And I thought I could just put it in the window and keep it alive. Simple. But… after a week, it had aphids. And a week after that, it was dead.

Okay… to be fair, a seasoned gardener will tell you that starting with cilantro was not the best choice. Cilantro plants are pretty fickle. I’ve attempted them at least 4 times since, and have yet to succeed. That, however, is beside the point. The point is, it died! I gave up gardening then and there. And then again many times thereafter, as I attempted again and again to grow something edible. There’s no reasoning with a determined, stubborn woman, I guess. That’s a good thing, though, because I learned from each of my failures.

For example, there was the time that I attempted to grow one row of corn in the flower patch along the shaded wall of my apartment. Not a great idea, apparently (corn needs many rows close together, and a lot of sun). Another time I was told to soak some carrot seeds overnight so they would sprout faster. I accidentally soaked them for two whole days; by the time I planted them, I think they had started to rot. I had no carrots that year.

I have also grown zucchini in a large pot. Interesting enough, that one was accidentally successful; the pot contained the roots and stunted the growth of the zucchini plant just enough to provide one zucchini a week, which is all I really needed… it was perfect for what we used, but not as much as I should have been harvesting.

After years of experimenting on my own and little successes here and there (but mostly spending a lot of money without much to show for it), we were given the chance to help a friend work on his garden. How that all happened is another very long, and rather miraculous, story that I will work my courage up to telling someday. Not today. Suffice it to say, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and one of the most rewarding.

To start with, the garden was massive. It was over an acre of land, and we grew everything: tomatoes, zucchini, corn, peppers, green beans, peas, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe, raspberries, asparagus, pumpkins, probably a few more things that I’ve since forgotten, and more kinds of squash than I’d ever heard of, all different shapes and sizes. And we were able to learn from a master gardener and farmer. It was quite an amazing experience, one I will be forever grateful for.

From working with our dear friend in his garden, we learned enough to take care of the plants, and help others start their own gardens, too. We had never really had a good spot to plant things at our house. Now that we had such a beautiful spot in our new home, I couldn’t wait to take use what we had learned to finally make a garden of our own.

So we made it happen. And Betsie was right! We’ve found joy in working together to help things grow. I believe that God loves things that grow, whether they be plants or people. And here, it is not only the garden that is growing.

I constantly learn lessons on love, not just from caring for a garden, but from sharing the joy caring for it with my parents and with my children. Liz loves having a yard that she is responsible to help with. She loves helping harvest dinner every night. All the girls help me in the kitchen, when dinner time rolls around, with peeling and chopping the veggies they grew themselves.

It always amazes me, watching plants grow. One of the children’s songs in our church says that “faith is like a little seed; if planted it will grow.” We put a tiny seed in the ground and have the faith that if we water and care for it the right way, it will grow. I guess it’s the same with people, too. God plants us where he needs us, and has faith that we will grow. And we, in turn, allow ourselves to be planted and expect that He will take care of us, and make us into more than we are.

Our faith has paid off. Good things have grown. And Liz is happy again.

I don’t believe that people ever become so set in their ways that they cannot change, or that people become so injured that they can never heal. It just isn’t true. We can always be different; we can always grow. We can always change for the better, and we can overcome pains and injuries. And God will help us, because he loves things that want to grow.