Live. Laugh. Create. Inspire.

There are millions of self-help books out there. Hundreds of thousands of books about how to know God more, deepen your relationship with Him, know His will, train up Christ honoring children….and the list goes on. Seldom do these books have a chapter on how to make your child suffer so that he can know redemption, how to strip away everything that is comfortable so that you truly rely only on Christ, or how to leap into a season of despair so that Christ can show you Hope.  Take a look at our family.

This was in March. We had just moved into our new home. J was half way through his first semester of law school. We were finally in our own home, making new friends and beginning to develop roots. We had a plan. We were ready to save the world by  helping women who had been sold into sexual slavery throughout the world find freedom through J’s law degree. We had dreamed about this future just as we had also dreamed about finally having our own home and the garden we would plant together. It was with  excitement that we tilled the soil and planted our first seeds. I have to admit that as we planted them, I began to have thoughts of doubt. Will these seeds  amount to anything? I don’t think anything will grow in this hard, clay-like soil. We don’t really know what we’re doing. I immediately thought to myself, isn’t this typical of our journey with Christ as well. Do we trust Him for the outcome we are dreaming of or are we stuck in unbelief that our dreams won’t come to pass?

As I watered our garden daily over the next months, spent hours weeding it and even re-planted everything after a major flood, I kept believing for the day that it would bear luscious fruits and vegetables that we would eat at our table . During these same months, J quit school.  We thought it would only take a week to find a job so we should have a week together as a family first.  That was 19 weeks ago. Recently, a friend who is an avid gardener pronounced our garden ‘dead’. “Quit wasting your water,” he said. Take a look at today’s garden.

Par for the course. Just as messy, tangled, confusing, and hopeless as our life has seemed. I was right all along, this garden wasn’t to bear fruit. We planted too late and the temperatures rose too quickly so that the plants that did actually come up couldn’t seed.  Around the same time that our garden was pronounced dead, our dear friends Larry and Debbie gave us a volunteer Crape Myrtle. I had never heard the term ‘volunteer’  before, used for a tree that seeds and grows beneath another, volunteering life without any outside help. Hundreds of seeds fall from a tree but only seldom does one actually bear fruit. This sounded good. We are a family who is willing to volunteer. Against all odds, we want what God has for us. Take a look at our volunteer.

Does it look dead to you? It sure looks dead to me. Par for the course. Things just keep getting worse around here. Except for one thing. I didn’t show you the bottom of the tree.

There, just above the grass is the beginning of LIFE. The beginning of a true volunteer. Against all odds, in an adverse, less than perfect environment (did I mention that at one point the kid I was babysitting uprooted this entire tree and was carrying it around the yard?), when it would have been easier to die, the volunteer is bringing life and hopefully someday color into our yard.

Do we do the same? We volunteer to follow Christ. But, there is no clause anywhere that says once you do so, your life will be happy, prosperous and perfect. So many times we think following God’s will brings the best circumstances into our lives. We thought so when we turned down that first job offer 10 weeks ago.  A better offer was surely just around the corner. Instead, we have learned the joys of patience and the depths of God’s love for us as we live literally day to day. The discipline of waiting on the Lord. Waiting for provision. Waiting for guidance as to how to spend each day. Waiting for prayers to be answered. Lessons I thought I’d be learning when we took the first happy garden picture months ago? No. But, each day, I learn more of God’s heart and how great His love for us truly is. Now, that’s something I’d volunteer for.

A friend shared Habakkuk 2:3  with us this week: “This vision is for a future time. It describes the end, and it will be fulfilled.   If it seems slow in coming, wait patiently, for it will surely take place. It will not be delayed.”

Tags: christian, family, Gardening, Habakuk 2:3, Inspire, Religious, wait for the Lord

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