Gardening and Prayer

So I don't forget, I will tell you about how gardening has become a time of mediation for me. I'm sure it doesn't take rocket scientist to figure out that when you're kneeling with your eyes down you see precious little of the world around you. Normally this doesn't directly lead me to a prayerful heart. Three, maybe four springtimes ago I was putting in annuals around my back door. It had been brought to my attention (by my MIL) that you can't just dig a whole and plop a flower in it. The ground needs to be "cultivated." Ah. See? I had no idea. She showed me how you get a shovel and work the entire area to maximize the soil's effectiveness, and then you use a fertilizer or hummus, etc... This seemed like a lot of energy for a little plunk of a plant, but okay, if you say so... The next day I was kneeling at the back step, working at removing the weeds from the turned-up soil, and the phone rang. It was Matt with a devastating prayer request. A young family, who had just retired from the military, had moved to our town to be near their best friends; actually, they were neighbors. They had been in town perhaps a month. That afternoon the youngest boy wandered off for only a moment, I believe he was 1-1/2 years. When they found him he was face down in a shallow, decorative pond, unresponsive. The best-friend mom began CPR, rescuers were called, he was raced to the hospital and placed on life-support. This was the call. And I was stunned. Normally this information didn't disrupt me much since I was an ICU nurse and not a mom at the time, but I was absolutely sickened. How could God allow this?! It was boggling to think of how new they were, no family, only loosely known at our church, how could this happen?!? I was still on my knees in the dirt. At that moment, I began to dig and weed and cry out to the Lord with a voice I'd never used before. I think it was the Mother-heart that God was beginning to create in me. I sobbed and groaned, and really lost my dignity there in my backyard. Mud smeared on my face, nose running, I told God that He MUST save that little boy. That I had not told Him what to do in critical circumstances before this, so just this once I was asking for a real miracle. That other situations I could accept, but not this one. That this was unjust. That this was wrong. That this was very un-God. And I begged with all my heart that the little boy would be made whole.

The outcome was the worst you can imagine. And a family experienced a grief that I think I would absolutely die from.

The next Spring I was out on a sunny day, shovel in hand, gloves on, turning up soil. And for some reason, the smell of the ground, the kneeling for weeds, rubbing my hands in the dirt, I was abruptly taken back to the year before. And again, my heart cried out for this young family. They had weathered the first year of loss. They had stayed in tact and even become active in the grief support group at church. And they were expecting another baby. I went inside and wrote them a little note to tell them that whenever I gardened I was driven to prayer for them. To this day I pray for them when I work in the dirt. And then I pray for others. There's just something about the physical posture that leads me to a time of earnest petitioning before God. I'm not much of an asker. Never have been. It is one of my spiritual blind spots, I admit it. I never bothered my earthly father for anything unless I absolutely couldn't avoid it, and that directly transferred to my Heavenly Father. But the humble position of gardening brings my soul to a vulnerable, honest place. "Lord, could you... ? God, I know you know, but would you mind... ? I don't know what your plan is, but there's this need... ."

Just like the earth needs the Creator's touch in order to produce, I need to bow and ask in order to see His hand at work. So the moments in the dirt... well, friend, to me that's just really, really precious.