Dead Plants and New Hope

It's Monday morning.  The house is quiet except for the sound of cloth diapers drying in the dryer.  The house smells like fresh bread coming from my bread maker.  I just poured myself a second cup of coffee. 

It's a rare moment of quiet these days. 

I just finished working in the garden.  Our garden has been nearly dead for a while.  We let it get overgrown with weeds.  It really looked more like a jungle than a garden.  Yesterday I was in there with Ainsley and she looked at me and said, "This is a mess."

No kidding my dear.

But today I put on my garden shoes and gloves and went to work.  I pulled out 2 huge garbage cans of dead and dying plants and weeds.  I only did enough to clean out half of the garden.  The other half will have to wait for another day.

And in its place, I planted some new crops.  I may be too late, but it's worth a shot.  I planted lettuce, broccoli, and kale.  All things that we use on a weekly and almost daily basis.

 

There is order among the chaos now. 

 

And while I was out there by myself in the quiet of just the work, I was able to do some reflecting on my life.  It's been 2 months since I have been home with my kids.  There hasn't been many days where I have had time to even pee by myself.  I hardly sit down.  The days are full and the evenings are full. 

It's almost like God saw me in the midst of my own chaos and just started pulling.  He pulled and pulled and it hurt and felt like I was being ripped out from myself.  You see I liked those plants.  They weren't all weeds.  Some of them were the plants that fed us for so long.  They produced the fruit of yesterday.  There is even still fruit there. 

But God had different plans for me.  And in order to make room for the new plants, He had to pull some of the old ones.  The plants that had produced so much fruit in there season were now dead. 

And in the new space, there is hope.  Hope of days of sloppy faces, crayons, Candy Land, nursing my baby to sleep, trips to preschool, Bible Study Fellowship, cleaning schedules, homemade bread, delicious dinners, and so much more. 

Oh and shoes that don't fit into any dress code anywhere.

Thanks be to God for changing my life.