Horticultural Intelligence

There are some things I fail miserably at but never want a second chance for a do-over.

Processing the grief of losing someone I love is one of them. 

When I lost my brother almost nine years ago I failed pretty badly at the whole grieving thing. I know people will tell you that there are no right or wrong ways to grieve but there are certainly healthy and unhealthy ways which in my mind means basically the same thing. The way I grieved was pretty unhealthy. I know that now but couldn't have known it then and I certainly never wanted another opportunity to learn from my mistakes. I was content using what I had learned to help other people grieve better but then we lost Dad and now I have to personally put to the test all the theories I had of what I should have done differently.  

Last time I buried everything I could as quickly as possible and got back to work on living my life. But what I discovered much later is that feelings are rarely ever just buried. They are usually planted. 

Burying and planting are pretty much the same process. The difference is that something buried stays in the same condition forever while something planted grows into something else. I thought I was burying hard feelings in a place so far down that they would not be able to reach me when really I was planting them in a place where they could grow into some out of control emotional plant monster disrupting my life. The opposite was true too. Things I wanted to plant like hope, joy, and peace so that they would grow into a flourishing healthy life were just buried and never grew to see the light of day. 

So since I have the opportunity for a do-over I don't want to mess it up again. I want to heal well no matter how much longer that takes than just healing quickly. The problem is that I don't know what feelings to plant and what feelings to burry. They seem to be so intertwined that I am having a hard time distinguishing the two. Let's take the basic feeling of loss for example. On one hand, the loss hurts and is not a place I where I want to spend a whole lot of time dwelling on. If I am not careful I will grow bitter and resentful at God for all the things that can never happen now that Dad is gone. But on the other hand, loss can create in me a longing for Heaven, a recognition of the frailty and value of life, and a dependence on God for my strength. I want to plant that revelation but burry the one that makes me angry at God.    

I want to plant the good memories but burry the bad ones. Or better yet, plant what I learned from both good and bad memories but burry what just hurts to think about that has no apparent constructive value. 

Knowing the difference is hard and at first I thought I would have to go through the long and tedious task of sifting every feeling and emotional response to decide what was good and worth keeping and what needed to be discarded as quickly as possible. But what if I messed up and threw away a life lesson God really wanted me to grasp or held onto something I thought was good and healthy that ended up causing me and others more pain as it grew into something bigger? Then God reminded me that a good healthy garden needs both seed and soil. Seed is obvious- it's the small bit of "good thing" that we plant in our souls to grow and make us better people and Christ followers. It is the thing that years later we recognize as a positive turning point in our lives. 

Soil, though less obvious, is what the good things grow out of. It is the environment in which the good things find their life but ultimately escape from. It becomes the point from which all future growth is measured. It's the stuff that we never want to go back to but recognize that we are better people having gone through it. And what makes the best soil? Fertilizer and compost.

In other words, poop and trash. 

God made a horticultural reality that uses discarded waste to makes plants grow and I think He does the same for the gardens of our souls. He is the best at pulling life from death and at using things with no life left in them to somehow provide a source of nourishment for things full of life. 

It is not for me to decide what feelings or responses I want to grow and which ones I want to burry. When given to God and tended by His hand all things that happen to me are either seed or soil or both. The seeds are the beginnings of something good and Holy that God wants to grow into something that bears fruit. The soil are the things that are so bad and disgusting that we want to abandon them as quickly as possible but God is going to use them as the environment that the seed will flourish in and grow out from. Both are needed for Life to prevail. In the hands of the Master Gardner the struggle for Life is a win win.

I know my garden is still young. It needs constant tending and as things planted begin to grow they will need continual attention to maintain health. Some things will need to be pruned. Some things will need to be violently removed like weeds. All things will need nourishment.

But that is for the next season. Today is about entrusting to God every thought, every emotion, every feeling. He knows what He is doing.