How To Not Hate Creating Again
July 2, 2026
Gardening The Soul
The sunlight swims into my bedroom, unwelcomed but relentless in its pursuit. I roll over and look for the little boy who usually crawls into bed (after Steven leaves for work) in the wee hours of the morning, but the bed is empty and all is quiet.
I want to go back to sleep, but then I remember, like the melody of a song, that it’s my favorite day of the week. I crawl from my bed and pull on a scrubby dress and steel through the quiet house. I grab my basket on the way out the door.
I open the door to the birds and the sunlight, filtering through the trees. The air is warm but the dew on the grass is cool and inviting. I look for bees on the clover peppered throughout the grass, but see none, so I traipse my way into the place that’s been beckoning me— the garden.
I inspect my strawberry patch that Steven built for me, in long wooden boxes attached to my front fence. I find a few vibrant, red berries nestled in the leaves. Next, I pull some plump figs from the tree and add them to the basket. Then I go to the planters beside my gate and snip and bundle, thyme, rosemary, mint and lemon balm for drying. Their scents mix with the birdsong and smell of the sun warming the earth.
I have eight rectangular, raised beds with a potato patch cut into the side. My potatoes are dug and the ground is covered, ready for a fall cover crop. I have a few fall flowers, herbs and carrots growing in the first beds. But I go through my pumpkin arch, with small white pumpkins and tan butternut squash dangling overhead to the place that’s captured my attention and time: my tomatoes. I find a web of leaves and vines climbing from its confines. I can’t seem to keep up with the suckers this year and it’s a bit wild, but a delightful and intoxicating kind of wild.
There is just something stunning about wild fruitfulness. It’s not clean, tidy and easy to manage, it’s more like an explosion of life that feels like a treasure hunt when finding the fruit.
There is just something stunning about wild fruitfulness. It’s not clean, tidy and easy to manage, it’s more like an explosion of life that feels like a treasure hunt than some curated experience.
I sit on the edge of one of my raised beds and think a thought that plays on repeat in my head, every time I’m here: oh, how I love this place.
How I love the sound of the birds. How I love the flowers. How I love the plants and the fruit. How I love who I am when I’m here.
It’s not just the vegetables that I love, it’s everything about the process. Gardening has been one of the most restorative and spiritual metaphorical endeavors I’ve ever embarked upon. Here are just some of the reasons I think that is so.
Gardening is Edenic
At the beginning of time, God put Adam in a garden. In Geneses, it says that God walked in the garden in the cool of the day (Gen 3:8). There is something ancient and grounding that occurs when walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It’s one of the places that feels as if heaven were colliding with earth in a tangible way. It makes me realize how small I am and how incredibly and intricately God designed growing things. How intricately He designed me, a growing thing. God, in his infinite knowledge knew that it was good for men and women to work in the tactile: with their hands. There was this work, this tending of the earth that He gave us, that is meant to be restorative and not merely performative or strictly for profit. In working with our hands, digging in the dirt and feeling the dust from which we came, we connect with ourselves, and moreso we connect with God. Gardening harkens to a time past— a time I was designed to know. The time mankind walked in the cool of the garden with the King of the Universe and we were not ashamed.
The Beauty of the Process
I’ve lived with the misconception for most of my life that God was in a rush. He was in a rush for fruit in my life. He was in a rush for me to forgive, repent and do all the right things. That He was in a rush to see me bear good fruit. For someone who has struggled with shame, this belief was crippling. I believed that somehow God needed things from me, when in reality, He’s God, and does not need anything. The belief that God is only concerned with the rush of fruit and not the process, is antithetical to how He designed creation. He created seasons for planting, pruning and harvesting. But gardening is the everything in between: the tending, the watering, the weeding, all which determines the next stage. I can go to the grocery store and buy fruit and vegetables, but what’s the fun in that when I can be alongside them to watch them grow? God doesn’t need me, He wants me. He wants to be in the intricacies of my life. He wants to dig around and find the rotten things (the places Satan has planted lies), prune the unfruitful (the places I haven’t surrendered) and nurture the parts devoured by bugs (restoring the places that trauma and sin have harmed). God is a gardener. He’s the Gardener of our souls and being in the process of gardening with Him has made me slow down, breathe deeply and accept the reality that God is not in a rush with me.
The Importance of Roots
If you’ve ever started a seed in the ground and watched it grow into a sprout, then a seedling and then a plant that bears fruit, you know that there isn’t any feeling quite like it. I don’t just tend these plants, I know them. I don’t just throw the seeds out and hope for the best. No, I plan for months and prepare the soil. When it's time to plant the seedlings, I tend them until they become established. I’ve recently learned that light, daily waters don’t make for strong plants with a healthy root system, so once they can handle it, I allow some stress and pressure to ensure that their roots are going down deeply into the soil. I don’t do this because I hope they die or to take them past their limit; I do this because it’s better for their health and their root system. I suspect it's the same with God. He doesn’t allow tests and hardships because He’s punishing us, He’s doing it because there is no other way to grow, except to go through the process which produces growth. So that our“… roots grow down into him, and our lives [would] be built on him" (Col 2:7 NLT). No one arrives fully formed. No one is the complete package. No one is immune from stretching, growing and seasons of feeling dry. Perhaps when we're feeling dry and not fruitful, it’s because God is encouraging your roots to reach towards Him, deeper and deeper until they find the springs of living water to nourish and satisfy our soul. Gardening has given me faith in the Gardeners Hand and to trust that the discomfort of growth is ultimately for my good.
Tied To Seasons
I think one thing that is often overlooked is that the garden is constantly changing. Nothing stays the same. There are seasons of dormancy, then there are seasons of bursting fruitfulness (like my tomato patch right now). I used to kind of detest the verse in Timothy 4:2 that commands, “be ready in and out of season,” because I thought it meant I had to be responsible for the fruit in my life and do the impossible. I thought it meant that I needed to somehow fabricate fruit and tape it to my quivering limbs because God somehow needed this offering from me. But since God has been tending my soul and reframing my misconceptions, I’ve learned that that verse doesn’t mean what I thought. The Greek word for “ready” is epistēthi which means to “stand upon" or "be present." Like someone who is on call and ready to respond to a command or receive that VIP phone call. Timothy was essentially being instructed to “be ready and be present and declare my goodness in season and out of season." What if the Gardener of our souls made us human? What if He designed us with a need to rest and restore? What if He isn’t expecting the striving, soul-sucking and depleting kind of fruitfulness I once thought? I’m discovering that fruit comes from being connected to Him and being responsive to His voice, while being present in the process of being human. Yet, still able to declare His goodness, even with dirt under my fingernails and fruit still forming. That is not a heavy burden. That’s a gift. I’m reminded that He is responsible for tending my soul and that I can either align with Him or think I can do it my own way.
While this is by no means an exhaustive list, it’s some of the reasons I love gardening and have learned so much from the endeavor. It’s not only a living example of my faith, but it’s a constant invitation for my own participation in it. It’s an invitation to remember my Edenic heritage and that I was designed to tend to the earth and walk unashamed. It’s a reminder that the beauty lies in the process, not only the result. It’s a living example of the importance of hardship and the pressure that produces a healthy root system. Yet, it is also a reminder that He is God of the seasons and that listening to His voice and being responsive to it, is the command, not some self-sufficient side quest. Gardening isn’t just a hobby; it’s an invitation to see life and myself through a whole new lens. It's an invitation to slowness. It's an invitation to revelation. It's an invitation to receiving far more than just the fruits of my labor, but fodder for the fashioning of my soul.
