I have been doing a lot of gardening lately and most days I enjoy it. Seeing things grow from seed all the way to harvesting can be very rewarding. However it does take a lot of effort and sometimes things just don’t work out.
This summer we have a huge number of grubs and caterpillars eating many holes in every thing from our leafy greens to even chomping off entire spring onions.
Father has revealed a number of things to my heart through gardening. A little while ago I was looking over our flat leafed cabbage and it stood out to me how much damage a tiny caterpillar can do when it eats just a small hole in the youngest leaf in the heart of the plant. It seems small enough at first and I mostly dismissed it, but as the leaf grows so too does the damaged hole.
It’s the same with me. I usually dismiss a seemingly small incident as a child as “it’s in the past, I can’t change it” or “it really wasn’t anything much”.
Later in life I have found myself struggling with sin, be it a bad habit or an addiction. I have subsequently found myself in an endless cycle of a failing, repenting and then trying to implement disciplines to keep myself from failing again. #repeat. All with no lasting success.
However, what I am focusing on is the gnarled, warped edges of my dysfunction, and effectively I’m trying to change the gnarled edges to be smooth and shiny. What I so often fail to see is that the gnarled edges are not the cause of my issue, instead they are the symptom of the root cause. In this case the root cause is actually the hole eaten in the leaf so long ago, not the gnarled edges which are in fact the result of my own self-preservation in trying to meet valid needs. My dysfunction comes from a lack of Love. And no matter how much I “fix” my dysfunctional behaviour this will never fill the Love deficit.
What I actually need is to have the seemingly small wound of the past comforted and healed so that today’s gnarled edged will bring forth new life.
So how can this happen? How does a child receive comfort? It cries and runs to mum. And so too for us. How heavenly father is just as much Our Heavenly mother as he is father. And if that statement invokes some kind of theological reaction for you then I encourage you to read Denise Jordans book The Forgotten Feminine. For me running to my heavenly father for comfort looks like:
Hearts on a Journey 