You Can't Rush Your Healing

 During the hardest portion of our lives, a roughly six year span where we were dealing with the devastation brought by cancer, death, addiction, and being physically separated from one another, a song found its way into our lives like a gift from heaven. The song is by one of our favorite artists, Trevor Hall, and the song is called “You Can’t Rush Your Healing.” The chorus encourages:

You can't rush your healing

Darkness has its teachings

Love is never leaving

You can't rush your healing

That song became a sort of mantra for us each day, and especially on the hardest days. Our lives are not, nor have they ever been, harder than anyone else’s experiences, but it is kind of like the old joke, “Do you know the difference between major surgery and minor surgery? If it’s your surgery it’s minor, but if it’s my surgery it’s major.” That being said, being a minister and the wife of a preacher comes with some unique occupational hazards, and they can take a toll on you after a few decades. I tried to shield Honey from as much of the friendly fire and collateral damage as I could, but it’s not always possible, and I didn’t always do a great job. She could have shielded herself from some of those wounds if she had been willing to fight back, or even just defend herself, but we had been led to believe that would jeopardize the work we were trying to do, so she turned the other cheek. Even if that was the right thing to do, it still hurts to take shots over and over. Eventually the time came when we both knew it was time to head on to greener pastures. Now you may be thinking, “The grass isn’t always greener on the other side of the fence” or “ If the grass is greener on the other side of the fence, try watering your grass” or some other cutesy cliche, but we choose to abide by, “The Lord is my Shepherd and He makes me to lie down in green(er) pastures. He leads me beside the calming waters. He restores my soul.” It just so happens that the greener pasture He led us to is a garden in the midst of what used to be a literal green pasture.

There are life lessons to be learned in a garden. This growing season has been marked by stretches of extreme weather. Early on, our little seeds and seedlings were literally drowning in water because of near constant rain, then for six straight weeks everything was burning up in 90+ degree weather and not a drop of rain. There are daily battles with pests, especially birds who are constantly poking and pecking at everything they see. This garden is a reminder that there is nowhere in life that you can hide from pain or problems. A consequence of the curse that our ancient ancestors unleashed — that we, if we are honest, often continue to propagate — is an environment that battles against the beauty we want to build. There will always be thorns and weeds that we have to deal with daily in our quest for goodness.

You will find most everything in a garden that you find in life — pests, pain, disease, death, disappointment, struggle — but one thing that simply does not exist in a garden is “rush.” You can work your fingers to the bone, employ every tip, trick and tactic for promoting growth known to man, and at the end of the day, you will find yourself waiting. Fruits and flowers grow steadily and daily, but they don’t grow quickly. That’s ok, we’ve already learned you can’t rush your healing, and even the darkness has its teaching.

Gardens are filled with surprises too. One of my favorite surprises is the blooms on my Jasmine vines. We are long past the time when they are in bloom, but every now and then, as if they were put there just to make my day, I will see a couple of little white flowers appear on a section of new growth, prompting me to literally stop and smell the flowers. Despite the fact that each morning I meticulously search the plants for ripe fruit to harvest, every few days I stumble across some hidden something that has grown to a massive size because it eluded detection for days. We’ve also been pleasantly surprised by the ever expanding ecosystem that has developed because other beautiful things are being drawn by the beauty of the garden. Hummingbirds, Gold Finches, ladybugs, bees of every size and style, and hundreds of butterflies of every size, color and pattern have made this patch of land their home. The beauty of Home Grown Faith has also attracted other beautiful souls with a heart for helping — I’ll have much more to say about them in a future post. 

By far, the best surprise has been something I didn’t even realize we were cultivating when we started all of this. Watching my sweet Honey heal, grow, and bloom has been the best thing to come out of this garden. The passion she has for this, the time she puts in to it, and the work she does. From my home office window I have a front row seat everyday to her labors in the garden. But it’s not just what I see from my work desk that inspires me, it’s watching the sparkle growing brighter in her eyes, hearing the joy ringing in her laughter, feeling the fire grow hotter in her ambition, and witnessing her creativity spilling over has been worth every penny spent, every callous formed and every drop of sweat. If there is anything in this garden that shows her heart, and her journey, it’s the hospital box in the center. As we’ve pruned and shaped the different areas of the garden, sometimes healthy and vibrant plants get damaged unintentionally — usually by me wildly wielding a hoe, rake or shovel. Where I would just toss those to the side and chalk them up to collateral damage, she replants them in a box she calls the hospital so that they can receive extra attention and care. She knows better than me, maybe better than most, that something may be battered, bruised, and broken, but with a little space, a little time, and a little care, they can bloom more beautifully than ever. The biggest and best producing squash plant in the entire garden had its stem broken as a seedling. Rather than throw it away, she added some compost and some mulch and at least two dozen people have since eaten from this “broken” plant.

One more thing that’s good about a garden, while it’s a place where you can learn to heal, grow, and find nourishment, it’s also a place you learn that it’s not all about you. One little seed can bear more fruit than you can possibly eat, which serves as a visual reminder that life is not all about you. A garden is a place where you can become fruitful and multiply so that you can give to others. Shutting ourselves off from others and hiding from the world might be an effective means of protecting ourselves from hurt, but that’s not a garden, that’s a grave, and our Shepherd leads us THROUGH the valley of the shadow of death, not TO the valley of death. On the other side of that valley, He prepares a table before me in the presence of my enemies. For many years I read that as a sort of taunt, kind of like “Na-na-na-boo-boo. You tried to beat me down and break me but look at me now. I’m sitting pretty, fat and happy with a table full of goodness and there’s nothing you can do about it.” Maybe that was how David meant it, but that’s not how I read it anymore. When I read these words I see a journey where my Shepherd led me through all the pain and suffering of life, and now He’s prepared a table where I can dine with those who once were enemies. Not everyone will want to take a seat at that table with me, but there’s an empty chair for you if you want it and a plate of home grown food if you’re hungry. Perhaps you too have been wounded in your journey. It may even be me who inflicted that wound, and if I did, I’m sorry. I hope in time you can heal and see there is a rose trying to bloom in the midst of all these thorns, and I’ll try to do the same.