“I was obviously supposed to be rich enough to pay someone else to do this.”
“Before couples are allowed to get married, I really think they should take a test to make sure at least one of them enjoys yard work.”
“I wonder if there’s such a thing as a ‘plant hospice’? If so, I might as well get these flowers on the list now.”
“People who garden for a hobby need to look up the word ‘hobby’ in the dictionary because I’m pretty doggone sure it’s supposed to include the words ‘fun’ and ‘relaxing’ and this is SO not feeling like either of those to me.”
Those are just a few of the thoughts that ran through my mind a few months ago as I attempted to beautify the jungle that is our yard. If you’ve ever thought that cultivating the American frontier must have been romantic and glorious for the pioneers, think again. When it comes to taming a wilderness, I do believe the concept is much more fun than the reality.
We’ve lived on our five acres of land now for more than 20 years and piece by piece, at a painfully slow and admittedly lazy rate, we’ve tried to enhance the landscape. Actually, I’m being gracious with the whole “we” thing – it’s mostly been “me” doing the enhancing, since my husband is much more concerned with functionality than aesthetics.
We have plenty of color in our yard, but it’s all the same color — green — because we live in the middle of the woods. Let me say that I do love living in the woods. Coop me up in town and I’m pretty sure I’d go nuts. But this year, I thought it was time to add more variety to our landscape so I decided to create a flower garden. How hard could it be?
Way hard, I discovered.
Especially if you are known throughout the plant world as a serial killer, as I surely am by now. If plants had post offices, my mug shot would be posted there. There’s hardly a kind of plant I haven’t unintentionally killed in my life. Horticulturally challenged doesn’t even begin to describe me.
Carving out a spot in my wooded yard for a small garden was indeed tough work – so tough I’ve spent months receiving various medical treatments to diagnose and repair the damage I inflicted upon my back and ribs as I shoveled and beautified.
But it does serve as a good reminder of the pain I sometimes cause God as He tries to create beautiful places in the wilderness regions of my heart. Sometimes I foolishly resist His good and loving work, just like the root-filled clay dirt in my yard resisted my efforts to turn it into a garden.
But God is persistent. He breaks up my “fallow ground” by showing me over and over that apart from Him, I don’t do life well. He waters my heart with His Word and His love. He uproots the weedy sins that take root and take over if I let them grow. And He slowly, patiently, inch by inch, reclaims the wilderness and brings forth His beauty in my life.
The value of my little garden is multiplied by the physical pain it ended up costing me. I love each branch and bloom because I have invested much in them.
How infinitely greater is the price God paid to bring forth beauty in my life – the very life of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.