This is the sum of what I’ve learned about gardening: the harder I try, the more dismal the results.
There are people with “green thumbs,” people with “not-so-green thumbs,” and then there are those of us who’ve apparently had some kind of gypsy horticultural curse put on us.
This might not be so bad if we lived in Manhattan, but we live in the country and country folk are expected to know how to grow stuff. We do have nice grass (the LEGAL kind) in our yard, but we have to pay a guy to spray the right stuff on it every few months to keep it nice. My husband was sure we could do that ourselves; I was sure we could not, or at least would not, based on many years of ugly lawns. I won that argument.
If you visited my house right now, you’d see that lawn and two pots of gargantuan blooming mums and you might mistake me for a person who knows how to grow things. But you’d be wrong. I’ve already explained the lawn and I’m telling you those mums are an accident and anomaly.
Yes, I did plant mums in those pots last fall, but when freezing temps set in, the mums died, as mums do. I intended to uproot the dead plants and stick some winter-hardy flowers in those pots, but I never got around to that. I guess I just cleared away the dead stems and accidentally left the roots. Last spring, little green sprigs popped out of the dirt in those planters and I assumed they were weeds, because that’s one thing I can grow—weeds (the LEGAL kind).
I was on the verge several times of pulling out the quickly growing sprigs to plant summer annuals, but something kept nagging at me not to bother them. All summer I left those mystery plants alone, not knowing if they’d ever become anything worth looking at.
Finally, last month, the now very big bushes began to bud, but I still wasn’t sure what they were. A real gardener would surely have known at that point, but I think we’ve established I’m not one of those.
And then, at last, the buds began to open and the mystery was revealed: my “weeds” were, in fact, purple mums. Beautiful, surprising, “zombie” mums that came back from the dead and confirmed my theory that the best thing I can do for a plant is to keep my mitts off it.
Something about this reminds me of parenting older children, or even mentoring others. We sow truth in the life of another, and then generously water what we’ve planted, but at some point, we have to loosen our grip. Eventually, it becomes time for us to take a step back, pray like crazy, and wait. To give them space to grow without our “helicoptering” presence.
It’s hard to resist the temptation to micromanage the lives of our kids and protégés well beyond the point where such intense guidance is healthy, and it’s equally hard not to panic when we’re not at all sure what they’re becoming.
Those mums were ugly and scrubby for months and I was sorely tempted to intervene and pull them up, but my uncharacteristic patience yielded the beautiful display of color we’re currently enjoying.
If you’re praying for people and see no signs of growth or positive change, keep loving, keep praying, and wait on God to do what only He can do. What looks like a weed today may one day bring forth beautiful blooms.
I’ve got the mums, and countless stories of transformed lives, to prove it.
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” – Ephesians 4:2