There have been a lot of voices in my head this year. Don’t worry, not the kind that require meds
and fancy white coats, just the kind that require prayer and yoga. Some of them
are spoken by my smallest self, others are the voices of people speaking into
my life who hadn’t earned the right.
As gardening season approached this year, I looked out the
back window with dread instead of joy because I knew the voices would assail me
in the quiet space between me and the earth. So, I put off any garden time,
thinking that waiting until June, when gardeners around here can safely put
things in the ground without fear of a surprise frost or snow, would buy me time
to quiet those voices.
In early June, when I walked past the leaf-filled branches
of our Linden tree to peek at the garden, my heart went into my shoes. There
was no sign of my precious garden, just weeds and established grass as tall as
my children. I couldn’t even see where the beds were supposed to be.
I went back inside and decided to leave the garden to its
own crazy this year.
More time passed and I remembered that my friend Emma said that
weed pulling dispels grief. I committed to one hour of weeding a day and
looking down as I worked instead of up to see the insurmountable work ahead. I
spent hours and hours on my knees pulling grass by hand (which will make you
pretty much lose function in your hands, I learned). I spent a good amount of
time with the weed whacker after Emma, my new gardening guru, suggested that
even if the weeds were just shorter, it might seem less daunting. And I have a
deep affection for weed whacking.
When I finally found the soil underneath the first bed, making
it all the way to the back fence with bleeding hands inside my gardening
gloves, I stood and had a victory moment. It was a small victory (there were 3
full beds to go and weeds in the smaller side beds as well), but it felt like
something momentous to me. I stopped to breathe in the silence.
The next day I decided to battle bed number two, even though
my fingers were swollen and wrapped in Transformer band aids. And this is when
the real victory came. My babes got in the cleared bed space behind me and
started finding lady bugs and other creatures and building homes for them. They
went and got Legos to build fortresses and hideouts for their little living
treasures. And instead of focusing on blocking out the old voices, I sat in the
dirt and listened to the precious voices of my children. Their innocence buoyed
me. Their affection for each other filled the dark corners of my heart. Their care for creatures
that “growm ups” overlook encouraged me. And their happy little voices filled
my ears with new voices. I remembered the Socrates quote I discovered via the
joys of Pintrest: “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on
fighting the old, but on building the new.”
As I kept going through the mean grass in the bed, for the
first time in my life praying for morning glory to be in my path, my mind let
go and with my babes voices fading into the background I started singing hymns,
praying for my Emma’s baby boy, praying for my miserably pregnant friend Carli who
needed to get that baby out, thanking God for my friend Anna who he gave me as
a special present this year, reflecting on bits of poetry and fiction that came
to mind, writing grad school entrance essays with newfound vision for what my
focus might be.
Two beds cleared, one bed planted with berries and two more to
clear. I haven’t heard the voices since I reached the fence. And holding brand new Georgia Jae reminded me of God's miracles that happen outside garden beds. Amen.
