The Unwilling Gardener
For years we planted a garden. I dreaded this impending rite of spring for a multitude of reasons. We would start making big plans for this beautiful garden in early January. In our minds, it would be at least an acre of beautifully tilled soil without a single weed. The rows would be evenly spaced. The ground would be soft and luxurious, almost like shag carpeting. We dreamed that every evening in the summer time we would stroll out to this enviable garden and delight in our efforts. We would collect the ripe fresh produce in beautiful wicker baskets lined with handmade tea towels while sipping ice-cold homemade lemonade from an antique glass pitcher. Later we would return to the Martha Stewart-style kitchen to prepare our fresh bounty.
The seed catalogs would begin to arrive with a frenzy. I am sure the delivery costs of our catalogs alone paid the salary of at least one mail carrier. Steve would pick out flowers and plants, the pages would be turned down and circled, and the ordering would begin. Steve had this beautiful ability to overestimate our ability to manage a garden.
Now for all of you avid gardeners who are gasping at my use of the word dread and garden in the same sentence, let me explain. Gardening, 24-hour caregiving, a full-time job, and an exhausted unwilling helper (me) are a recipe for disaster. Steve had visions of something from Southern Living, and my idea of raising fresh produce was a little closer to a small container garden like the one I had planted in the third grade. The garden yield usually ended much closer to my third-grade project. Does that make me a visionary?
My journey as a caregiver was much like our garden plans. I started full of energy and enthusiasm, planning how to survive this disease; I read every article on how to be a caregiver, ordered books, made charts for medicine, and three-ring binders to organize everything. I still dreamed about where we would grow and how our garden of life might bloom. I soon learned that my plans are not His plans, but His plans are always better than my plans.
I learned that the soil we were planted in, our family and friends would erode in a place we didn’t expect. Some weeds would need to be plucked out. Some flowers were only meant for a season and would diminish as soon as they became cold and hard. However, God enriched a new place in our garden soil for every friend who caused a small area of erosion or every family member who disappeared when it got tough. New friends and additional family members were planted in our lives, and we grew in ways we never expected. Our church family, my work family, Steve’s work family, friends from out of state, and people we met unexpectedly during a meal or a hospital stay became our strength and encouragement.
If you are a caregiver and you are experiencing a time when your garden of friends and family isn’t flourishing, don’t give up on your garden. Your gardening and friendship skills are not in jeopardy. Isaiah 58:11 tells us,
“And the LORD will continually guide you, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and give you strength to your bones, and you will be a like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”
It could be that God is planting new family and friends who haven’t bloomed yet and removing a few who aren’t yielding the crop you need in your life.