The month of October is upon us. I live in Louisiana, so of course it is still hot here, but it is starting to cool off this week. The grass has died off, and the leaves are drooping from the trees. The fall crops are beginning to get ready. Soon we will have loads of sweet potatoes, fall tomatoes, and later in the season, a smorgasbord of different kinds of pumpkins. People are planting their mustard greens and turnips. The heat and the rain have produced a plentiful crop.
Before you know it, winter will be here, and it will be time for football, Christmas carols, and sweet potato pies. I can feel my pants getting snug now. Like life, there are so many good things about the fall, even though we see life begin to seep from things. Life in recovery is much the same way. Seasons of change, relationships, jobs, and clothes.
Sometimes change happens quickly and sometimes slowly. Today, I find that I am often so busy that the days pass me by. It seems as if a week has passed, and it has been a whole summer.
We had a big summer at our house. My son, Tanner, who turns 14 this year, got his first job, learned to drive the zero-turn mower, and learned how to keep up the yard. Last week, while driving down the road, he made a comment in passing about how awful it looks when someone just mows and doesn’t weed-eat the yard.
I just smiled and said, “Oh, is that so? Why do you say that?”
He said, “It looks unfinished, halfway done. At least if they didn’t mow, it would all look the same.”
Before this summer, he would have never even noticed anything about someone’s yard.
I thought to myself, what a big change in thinking he has had this summer! When they first started, Tanner really hated weed-eating, and you could tell. He would miss spots and leave things undone. He might go around the house but skip the fig trees. My husband would patiently send him back out to do it again until it was finished.
Today, I am not sure how much Tanner loves to work in the yard, but he does have a great sense of accomplishment, and his confidence in himself has grown tremendously. My husband still doesn’t love being patient either, but he is getting better at it, and he sees the fruit of it in our lives.
They are not the only ones who had a chance to grow and develop this summer, either. I had to learn how to let go of some things. It has not been easy for me to step back and let someone else be in charge.
I wonder, if our spiritual lives were presented as a yard or garden, what kind of shape would they be in?
In the parable of the sower, Jesus gave an example of seed that was planted in different areas. Some fell on hard ground, some along the roadside, and some on pretty good ground, but it was overtaken by briars and weeds. Other seed landed in good soil and produced a plentiful crop (Matthew 13:18–23).
If Jesus drove by my spiritual garden today, He would see some neatly laid-out rows built by long habits of morning time with Him, prayer, and confession. Times of study and intimate fellowship with the Lord.
He would also see some grown-up places. Neglected places where the grass is high and dry, with thorns and stickers and probably some ant beds. I avoid those places because they are in the hot sun, and I get sweaty and sunburned and about a billion ant bites.
My spiritual garden is also amongst those of other members of my family and my church family. I am not in a world all my own. Everything of mine is tied to many others in many ways.
If I am honest, if it were up to me, Tanner would never have learned the things he learned this summer. I couldn’t teach him those things, and I had to move out of the way and let my husband teach him. That has been hard for me.
I want to be everything for my kids. It’s not possible, though. I have to let others in to teach my children things I do not know. I had to back out so that he could grow.
My season of pruning became his season of growth.
My little spiritual garden got cleaned up a little this summer. My fear and control got cut back, and Tanner’s confidence and happiness grew. God was working the whole time, even when I honestly felt like a part of me was dying.
Tanner is my last child, my caboose, the one who has been through some of the hardest battles I have ever faced. I went through getting sober, getting divorced, and getting remarried, and through it all was this little boy who slept by my side, went everywhere I went, and took every step I took. And now he is stepping into adulthood and becoming a man.
It takes time for fruit to be produced in a garden and in our lives. God is patient with us and he gives us the proper food at the proper time so that we will have the things we need to mature. I keep getting chances to apologize when I forget something important my husband needs. I keep getting a chance to spend time with my mother. I keep getting a chance to spend time with my grown kids and my soon-to-be two grandchildren. I do not get to make as many meetings as I used to, and that has been a big adjustment for me as well. God is showing me that my first ministry these days is in my family. The principles I have learned in those meetings are the foundation that Jesus and I are using to guide my life.
Progress, not perfection.
Tomorrow, Jesus and I will get back up and go at it again.
Thanks for letting me share.
