Lessons in the dirt
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| Hollenback Community Garden, Brooklyn, NY: Once the site of a destructive fire, volunteers pitched in and brick by brick created beauty from ashes. |
I wrote this last June or July when the earth was warm and I was waiting, waiting, waiting to see what my garden would grow. And I find it a good reminder tonight. We have been the receivers of many sad and broken stories these past two weeks. Some of them belong to people we know and well-love. Others belong to people we never met and probably never will, though our hearts bend and break for them just the same--their stories the kind that remind us to savor every single precious moment, however mundane or even downright wearying it may seem. So, I was going to write something new, but instead turn to something old written in a warmer time when I could see the green earth instead of just imagine it, instead of just hold faith and wait.
Here are some things my kids have taught me:
- Love today
- Take pleasure in the created order
- Use your senses
- See (inside) people
- Laugh more than you cry
- Cry when you need to
I never imagined I could love this life as much as I do, or be as exhausted by it as I sometimes am. The children--well, I knew I would love them. But the lifestyle--staying at home. Cleaning and caring for, tending and loving. It's a bit like back-breaking garden care. The sight of first green, the miracle of life and growth that sometimes leads to harvest and other times failure.
Blessed are those at the end of their rope because they can be tied to God ~Ann Voskamp
You learn from the failures--about the conditions for best growth, about the elements, about chance. And you savor the harvest--the sweet shocking flavor of something grown by the work of your own two hands. The harvest that nourishes your own body and soul, giving you far more than dirt-stained hands should hope for.
Grace alone is the gossamer thread that holds your life together ~Ann Voskamp
When, as a young girl, I imagined my future, it played out as a series of accomplishments, of tasks and experiences I would master. It played out always in my favor--education, career, travel, marriage family, and finally graceful aging. All of it would be well-ordered, a series of self actualizing choices and events that would shape my identity. If I worked hard, stood tall in the face of adversity, held my head above the fray. Where did the grace piece fit into my life's puzzle?
You only have to lose track of who you are, or who you thought you were supposed to be so that you end up lying flat on the dirt floor basement of your heart. Do this, Jesus says, and you will live. ~Barbara Brown Taylor
Being here at home, I learn how narrow was my view of a life well-lived. You lay down, you pluck out, you fail daily, you humble yourself before the small creatures in your house running about on pudgy legs grown long and lean with use. You follow behind, picking up, wiping off, guiding rather than leading. And you have not lived until you have dwelt in the trenches of daily living (whatever that looks like for you), where you find your face muddied and your head muddled and your nerves addled by the constant toll of everlasting need. And you will find in that exhaustion (whatever its cause), in your own longing for peace, in your questioning heart, "Am I doing it right? Did I choose the right path?" that the answer is always No. And it is always Yes. No, you never can. Yes, by grace you will.
You stoop down to make me great. You broaden the way beneath me so that my ankles do not turn ~Psalm 18:35b-36
The sound of scampering feet and the cries of a small boy draw me back into the trench even now. I feel my way along the path, which is neither straight nor narrow. Life is a winding thing, but the way is gentle and broad. I feel my way in the dark, waiting for the good earth to give up its green harvest. Certain it will. Certain of joy. Not because of my labor alone, but in spite of and alongside it.
By grace. By grace alone.