After learning about Back-to-Eden gardening, I was sold on the idea. (I'm not going to go into the details of what it is and how to do it, because it's explained far better at this link. And big bonus...there's a wonderful video that explains it all.) But, suffice it to say that the first time I saw the video, I was ready to buy the supplies and get started. A no-fuss, very-little-watering-required garden that was based on how God Himself gardens in nature was exactly my kind of thing. I had to see if it really worked as well as they claimed it did.
And, as is so often the case, God was working spiritually in my life what was manifesting itself physically in my garden. He walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and here He is thousands of years later, talking to me in my Back-to-Eden garden. This intrigues me.
So, we live in Texas Hill Country, which means beautiful rolling hills. And lots and lots of ROCKS. Just try planting a simple seed, and your little shovel will shriek in agony against rocks below the dirt (imagine the nails-on-chalkboard sensation, and you're pretty close to understanding my gardening scenario!). So, if a Back-to-Eden garden really works, it was going to have a challenge in this place!
A Bobcat came in to clear a 25x50' space for our garden. Watching him ripping out trees and removing large surface rocks, I already knew this garden was going to be symbolic of my life. I had experienced God speaking clearly through other things like butterflies, fungus-infected tree limbs, hawks circling high above. I knew that my eyes and ears had a spiritual vein, and if I was quiet and tuned in, I'd see and hear God speaking through the most ordinary of life experiences. And this Bobcat was prepping the barren, rocky land for a God-inspired garden.
Allergy-inducing cedars were removed. Ask anyone in Hill Country about these, and you'll hear the same story...misery in the spring! So, good riddance, cedars!
And all the cleared trees and weeds were burned. I watched from the window as the fire raged. Sometimes we have to be leveled. Sometimes the only way to get to fertile ground is to let God come in with His consuming fire. I remembered a prayer I had prayed in 2008 that changed my life: "God, level me. Knock me down to nothing and then rebuild me the way You want me." (Little did I know that 8 years later I'd still be in the sometimes insanely painful knocking-down process! But God is good...really good. He is faithful to also rebuild. And my garden was reflecting the very changes He was bringing about in me.)
I watched the flames consume all they touched. Is it truly sacrifice to burn the very things that are keeping the land from being a fertile garden?
Painful. Gut-wrenching. But necessary.
The land was leveled as best as the Bobcat could manage.
Then we hit a lull. For various reasons, the supplies for the garden (soil, mulch, manure) weren't trucked in for many months. In that delay time, tall weeds grew back. And, like God orchestrating a painting right before my eyes, I found that each stage of my garden mimicked my own life. Things in my life had hit a point where change was necessary, and yet I was numb. Paralyzed. And the weeds grew to terrific heights, taking over the spaces I had cleared out.
With sweat and muscles, the weeds had to be removed. Sometimes we simply have to do what we have to do.
And more rocks were removed.
Stakes were set in the ground to mark off the boundaries of the soon-to-be-planted garden, and we began to envision things as they would be. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. Faith drills down stakes and says, "THIS barren spot is going to be teeming with life soon. Right now it looks like dry, desolate, rocky ground. Right now, weeds threaten again and again. But soon...very, very soon, this land will breathe and generate and rejoice." This is faith.
Stones were trucked in to provide a border for our garden. Most Back-to-Eden gardens that I had seen online didn't have a border. But we live on a hill, and when it rains, it washes rocks and dirt downhill. So, we opted for a stone-stacked border.
For those of you familiar with Back-to-Eden gardening, you'll recognize the layering: newspaper and then soil. (Later we put mulch and manure, which I didn't get pictures of.) This represents hours and hours of work.
Among the stacks of newspapers that we used were several blank white pages. Writers see all manner of possibilities when we see blank pages! I used these to write promises. Because sometimes all we have are God's promises. His promises are for us, and we have to grab ahold of them, claim them as ours, and believe He will be faithful. Faith is having nothing but a promise and hanging onto it for dear life. Saying, "Remember, God, You promised. And I believe You." There are general promises given to everyone and specific promises that He's divinely highlighted personally for one of His children at a specific point in her life.
And for His daughter who was as desolate and dry as the rocky soil under her feet, He had said He would comfort all her waste places. That He would make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord. He promised that her wilderness and dry land would be glad, and that her desert would rejoice and blossom like the crocus. And all she could do was grab ahold of those promises and simply believe.
Those promises became the foundation of the garden. All throughout the newspaper layer, we placed these promises. Everyone hoping for a fertile garden. And I trusting for so much more...fertile soil of ground and life...for His promises to go down deep and come up as beauty for my ashes, joy for my mourning.
I failed to get many garden photos. But I did take these two. You cannot mistake the size and health of this zucchini plant! And the zucchini itself...wow. The Back-to-Eden video had talked about the moisture inside the vegetables. And no kidding. Our garden had very little water over the summer, and yet the vegetables were bursting due to the mulch layer keeping the moisture locked in where the plants were growing. After cutting into my first veggie and seeing this for myself, I completely bought into the Back-to-Eden garden concept. Yes, it really works.
Sometime after the summer harvest had been brought in, the plants that had given everything in them, turned a crispy brown and curled in upon themselves. They were finished. I, too, found myself struggling. Sometimes we've given all we can give. Sometimes we are simply finished.
I had always wanted to try planting a fall garden, so, even though my energy was low, I planted lettuce and spinach. With a Back-to-Eden garden, I knew that I needed to keep it watered until the little leaves popped out. But, this small step was all-of-a-sudden too much. I felt gutted. I was literally at the end of my proverbial rope.
I. Was. Finished.
And my garden and my newly planted seeds? I waved my hand, saying, "Never mind. I'll give it a try next season. I don't have a single ounce of energy to tend to plants."
Ever hit that point? The garden I loved lay untended. The bird feeders hung empty. The wheat grinder collected dust in the cabinet.
This was a turning point. A breaking point. And God, who had never for once let go of His daughter, was, in fact, heading up the knocking-down-and-rebuilding process. Every detail was in His hands.
Remember Joseph who had been sold into slavery by his brothers and then later put into prison for a crime he didn't commit? Even what his brothers had intended for his harm God had actually used for the good of Joseph and ultimately for God's glory. We can look back and see how obvious it was that God's hand was moving things, but Joseph didn't have the luxury of being able to read the end of his story to know it would all turn out well. He only had a promise that God had given to him, and I can imagine him in a desolate prison clinging to that promise.
Fall and winter brought with them life events that mirrored the seasons. A season when the leaves are stripped away, and the bare limbs are exposed. But in that stripping, there is the simplicity of truth. Sometimes we simply have to walk into the truth, even if it hurts. Sometimes we have to dare to strip off the pretense, the plastic I'm-fine-how-are-you syndrome. Sometimes the most courageous thing we can do is to let our true selves be...well, true...even if that truth means pain. And during this season of facing truth head-on and with immense support from people God placed in my life, I realized that He really is holding me. Cultivating me. And underneath the surface, great roots of faith are growing. Newborn leaves poke out above the surface, and I begin to see tiniest glimpses of that fertile land He promised me.
So, I had walked away from my garden in November after planting some lettuce and spinach seeds and never even finishing to water them during their crucial germination period. I didn't step foot in my garden for two whole months. No watering, no doting. Didn't even think about it. I literally channeled every ounce of energy into the healing and self-care God was guiding me into. My garden was just going to wait until spring when I might be whole and healthy enough to work it.
But God is full of surprises! Last week I looked out the window and saw several green weeds in the garden, so I walked down the hill to see just how bad it was. And in the midst of some weeds, there I found 3 rows of lettuce and one row of spinach! Somehow, without my help, almost every seed I had planted had taken root and had been growing during those 2 months when I was absent. God's attention to detail is significant. I marveled at how He had somehow (seriously, how??!) rooted my plants, even without my own faithfulness to water the new seeds...even without my own ability to go tend my garden for 2 solid months. And, again, He timed this garden to reflect what was going on in my own life. During those 2 months, He was working on my own personal root system. He is faithful...seriously faithful.
