“Might I,” quavered Mary, “might I have a bit of earth?" In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled. “Earth!” he repeated. “What do you mean?” “To plant seeds in—to make things grow—to see them come alive,” Mary faltered. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Though the season of glory for gardens is ending, I keep thinking about them. I keep singing The Oh Hellos song, Zephyrus, “I want to help mother up an orchard, from a seed up through sapling…”
I would like a bit of earth. In a season where much of what was once stable is now lost, unknown, or shifting, I am a stranger in my own life.
That may not be a bad thing. But it is a hard thing. So much of what will happen is unknown. For all of us, this is true (Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow, says James). Still, there are seasons where the unknown lives like a quiet neighbor next door, and seasons when it digs into our shoulders like an over-heavy pack—when open hands have nothing to hold onto and we are trying to regain our footing.
Many people want to say “You have to hold on to Jesus!” I don’t disagree, but I also don’t think those words are coming from a place of understanding, of really sinking down into what is the strangeness of my season. Holding on doesn’t always mean we have no questions. My questions are evidence to me that I want to hold on. In fact, they are the means to holding on. They help me enter this season in a posture of learning, of wanting to know God more, of seeking the thick roots of truth, not thin, easy-to-pluck fruits.
The places I have once felt at home no longer feel like home. Some have been sold, others contaminated. Places are important to me and have been a powerful means to grow. Both in my understanding of others and myself. Jesus is preparing a place for us—places are important to him, too.
The groups of people amongst which I once felt at home no longer feel like home. There are still individuals whose company and conversation is a shelter. Yet, because of my own and others’ circumstances and choices, my work, my church, and other groups feel like foreign lands. My grief and my pain have found no home amongst them.
Jesus is making us a people, a Church, a body. People are important to him, and to us. He is making us into a people for his kingdom. Yet we wait, and some days we wake with a bitter taste in our mouths, and heavy hearts.
Though I am made alive in Christ, I still must rise and eat to nourish my body. Though I believe he is good, I cannot explain why. When my mom wasn’t healed, and other prayers have gone unanswered or slammed shut like fire doors, I cannot find words to illuminate my own heart to anyone, even myself. I believe and I cannot explain why, and I don’t think I need to, not yet anyway. I am dreaming differently in this season. Still, I dream.
I would like a bit of kingdom come. I want God’s glory—which is our good, and our neighbor’s good—to be where I am. I want to trust when the Lord has withheld what I thought I needed. When he has taken what I have loved. When he has seemed silent though I have wept to hear his voice.
I would like a bit of green pastures. I would like still waters. I don’t want just to receive, but to accept his invitation to take part in planting seeds and mothering up saplings. Not just in my own life, but in others’ lives—I want “to see them come alive.”
I would like a bit of earth.
