Overgrown

@audreycfrank

Sometimes life, like a neglected garden, becomes overgrown with weeds.

As I write this, I am staring out my window at what was once a carefully tended, intentionally planned garden of perennials. I designed the garden with the goal of creating a burst of beauty and color when looking out any of my home’s eastern facing windows.

Sitting at breakfast, I could see butter-colored confederate jasmine blossoms, pink knockout roses, slender lavender blooms, orange tiger lilies from my great-grandmother’s garden, purple butterfly bushes, and wild blue violets. From the living room where my desk sits, peonies, iris, and heritage roses comforted my eyes and brought delight to my spirit. On mild days, I loved to open the windows and door, allowing the scents of rosemary and mint to perfume my thoughts.

But today I cannot see the fruit of my carefully laid plans. The hillside is covered in weeds, the result of months of neglect. My garden has not heard the sound of work in some time, and it shows. Like my life in the past year, it is overgrown. The past year has been a year of suffering and stretching, hoping and growing.

The weeds crept up quietly while we were distracted by other things.

One normal afternoon last November, the final tendril wrapped its stalk around our hearts, choking out the light. In a moment, our lives changed. For months we sat in darkness, snatches of light coming here and there as the Master Gardener uprooted weeds we didn’t even know had taken stubborn root.

Eventually, light replaced the darkness and we began to grow again. It felt good to be stripped back to a sort of clean beginning. Blinking in a new light of grace, we looked at each other as if for the first time.

I imagine if one could gaze into the windows of my family’s hearts much like I am gazing through my living room windows right now, they would see a carefully tended, intentionally planned garden of perennials. Perennials are the kind of flowers that come back year after year, their fragrant blossoms reminding us of God’s faithfulness. Our hearts are brimming with fragrant blossoms that were fertilized with suffering. The fragrance they carry heavy like the dew is Christ Himself. It is the fragrance of heaven’s streets.

 

God is relentless in his gardening, determined to produce perennials in our hearts. He intends to establish beauty that will remain throughout all the seasons of our lives.

Long ago when we were preparing to move to Africa, I made a deal with the Lord, much in the same way beloved children often make foolish requests of doting parents. I basically agreed to go anywhere in the world He wanted me to go as long as I had dirt to grow flowers in.

For years, it seemed He had agreed to my childish plan. I fought with the hardened, sun-baked soil of East Africa to transplant native lantana, rejoiced in the dark, rich soil of England as I planted primroses in February, and took my cues from the king’s gardeners in North Africa when it was time to prune the sweet-smelling Damascus roses that grew in our walled garden.

Now in America, I have all the ground I could wish for, and not enough time to tend it. I used to joke that if my garden was going well, ministry was not, and if my ministry was going well, my garden was not, for I did not have time for both.

This has been a year of people gardening. The primary people have been within the four walls of this house, those closest and dearest to me. The Master Gardener has been pruning, stripping, outright digging up and replanting, dividing, and weeding. Indeed, today we must look beautiful to Him.

So I will lay aside my anxiety over the weeds in my physical garden today in exchange for bringing pleasure to my Father, who has given me so many gardens around the world. Perhaps the one He has created in our hearts this year is the loveliest of all.

As for my own garden, I know, underneath the wild morning glory vines and cornflower stalks, remain the perennials I planted so lovingly years ago. In due course, I will tend my garden again and they will rise to wave at me through my breakfast room window, reminding me of God’s faithfulness. The overgrown areas will blossom again with new beauty.

Lord, thank you that you are not anxious about the work it will take to reclaim my heart today from the weeds that have overgrown it. Do your work in me, and fill me with the fragrance of Christ. Amen.