From time to time, my gardening stick reminds me to look through the broader lens of God’s love, respecting the other, for each has her own beauty and his own challenges.
For several years, I lived in John 15, where Father Gardener seemingly spared few opportunities to prune me back. Even at the height of His lopping though, I Knew it was Love’s wounding.
I felt divided. We were at home in our community, but I sensed that God was moving us elsewhere. My Belhaven gardens met me in the struggle, teaching me that in separating from the familiar, I would experience a multiplication, of sorts.
Our gardens were extraordinary, despite the fact that neither my husband nor I were particularly adept at gardening. We simply chose plants that preferred our Mississippi soil and watered them as needed.
But in looking back, the secret to our outstanding gardens was the same secret that got me through my dark night of the soul, dividing and pruning.
I ritualized separating the irises’ rhizomes and began imagining that my husband and I, like the rhizomes, would become parents to future blooms elsewhere. Visualizing grew into trust that eventually led to anticipation of moving to Tennessee.
The name iris comes from a Greek word that means rainbow. Colors of joy surrounded me in my darkest night, asking me to distinguish myself from a position and church family in which I was deeply rooted.
The irises’ rhizomes invited me to separate from the bloom and move into the dark solitude of sacred soil, rather than remaining rooted in sameness like their neighboring azaleas.
And as Father Gardener pruned me, I pruned our azaleas. I pruned and pruned almost as if I wanted to prove that one could be pruned too much. The piles of debris at my garden’s edge reminded me of the emotions I wanted to discard, but each spring, fresh sensations blew through me, as I stood completely astonished at the explosion of color.
Was I like the iris that relied on occasional splitting and movement under the soil or the azalea, deeply rooted in the same place, dependent on regular pruning from above?
My garden gave me an appreciation for the differences of others. The distinctions of the people around me completed God’s garden, just as the differences of my irises in one bed and azaleas in another, had completed mine.
At times, Father Gardener prunes and at others, He divides and moves. Now, when I fail to fully appreciate how another approaches life, nature quickly reminds me. I wander out in the vast landscape of New Mexico, to learn from this place we now call home. Soon, I discover, once again, the diversity that makes creation whole and complete.