I planted Begonia’s this year. They were my grandma’s favorites.
I didn’t learn a lot from my grandma, except when to stay silent, how to dig deeply, and this white-girl love for basketball.
I take the long, pointed scooper, bend low on a stump I find randomly around our property. And there, along the cement slab, root out, until I spot a dandelion boasting across the inscription reading,
“One is Nearer God’s Heart in a Garden than Anywhere Else on Earth”.
A dandelion next to this God inscription? I point my shovel at the depths of that deeply ingrained object and uproot it fiercely. For no one likes nasty weeds next to unspeakable beauty.
Still, this well-lined garden can’t sustain itself for long, without intervention of its own. For all gardens grow weeds if we abandon them for too long.
I go along, finding flowers growing wildly in the rich top soil. Weeds grow there too. Healthy soil is always sprouting ground for a mixture of what the world offers…
But it isn’t until I find “Snow on the Mountain” that I realize the weeds aren’t the problem, it’s the grass intertwined with the flowers that are impossible to root out. I mean, how do you uproot the smallest seeds, the thorns among beauty, when you want to keep the beauty blooming, untainted?
The weeds and tares come to mind. “Keep it” I whisper somewhere inside. Scripture says the day will find itself out…which is beauty, which are weeds. None of us have to live our lives as weed-hunters. Our eyes were meant for beauty, simply.
Then I move on…thinking about my own life…how sometimes I see beauty, but in reality “my flesh” and “God” are often intertwined…and yet, I fail to see it.
I whisper in the dirt, “Cultivate the ground of my soul, Lord. Purify me that I might not be weeds alongside your beauty, or grass tainting the glorious work you want to do in me.”
And although it’s a difficult task, by His Spirit will separate the long, green blades of our flesh from the white blooms of grace….If we let Him..
My grandma dug worms for my brother and my tomboy self to go fishing one summer in my childhood. She touched those squirming critters, unafraid, explaining, worms aren’t “evil” they are actually what purifies and keeps the soil rich, soft, healthy. And yet, too often, I only want beauty, without worms squirming through my life, filtering all I am and have….
How foolish I have been.
Soil without worms of conflict, some hindrances, will never be rich…it will only be dense, shallow, dry, and useless. And who wants a life that won’t grow what God intended?
My grandma didn’t speak much, but beauty seemed to radiate from her when she did two things. One..when she worshiped in the kitchen when she thought no one was listening. Two…when her palms were deep in the dirt and the beauty and the earth seemed to grip her, weeding the pain from her life like we all must do in time.
I glance at my hands and feel the grit between my bare fingers. I used to ware gloves, but there is just something about feeling the sod, the earth, creation at it finest spilling between each finger.
I am reminded of how, “from dust to dust” we will be returning. And how in my puffed up state I forget that I am no more than dirt molded by my Father’s hands. That I am but a speck in all of creation, a small part of the beauty He is creating in the garden of our lives.
And finally, I get lower. Because weak legs can only stand for so long. And there below I look for the only thing I can, there in the thick of the flower bed.
A cross.
A cement cross we found nestled in the depths of the dirt, months after buying this place. I remember thinking, “How strange? A solid cement cross under mounds of dirt? What is it doing here?”
And yet grace is often found in piles of dirt anyway…isn’t it? The beauty of His sacrifice, often seen after digging through the most unexpected places…at the most unexpected times.
I dust it off. Wash it. Value it. And put it in my eye sight so I could see it every day when I drive up to this house…Our promise from the Lord.
And lower and lower still. Until my backside sits firm on the only unshakeable thing near. And these bare hands covered in the thickness of grim soil remembering why I am here…
The cross.
My grandma loved begonias. I do to. I planted some this year…
