Learning About My Bitterness With My Garden

OK...let's continue the work in my spirit with this Bitterness Thing.  :)  I keep thinking of analogies to get myself in the right frame of mind.  Someone must be praying...!

This morning I went outside to check on my garden.  My garden.  How nice it is to type those words.  To read them after I typed them.  How much more nice still, to bury my face into the sticky leaves of a tomato plant on a hot, summer day, and inhale.  One of my favorite smells.

This is my first garden since I've been back in California.  It's a big deal.  The size of the garden isn't.  It consists only of a single tomato plant, two cucumber plants, and a jalapeno plant.  Compared to the gardens I'd have in Nebraska, this is teensy.  But in terms of what it means to me, it's HUGE!!

When I first planted it in the spring, I was outside daily, watering it.  If anything resembling a weed popped up anywhere near my precious plants, they were plucked out stat.  I put cages around the tomato and cucumber plants to support their growth, and give the vines a stable foundation.

The results are pleasing.  Rewarding.  Shocking.

I saw what looked like the color red at the base of the tomato plant this morning.  Could it be?!  I stooped down and for a split second was elated at what I found.  It was what appeared to be a perfectly ripe tomato.  I reached.  I thought I would pluck, but soon realized it had plucked itself.  It sat on the edge of the planter apart from the plant, and quite squishy.  With a big hole...a cavernous hole.  And a green tomato worm.  And what appears to be a nursery of young ones?!

It had been a tomato left unattended during Hugo's and my vacation.  But, at least it didn't go to waste, right?  She looks quite satisfied.  And hungry when she started, it seems.

Interesting.  See what happens when we leave ourselves unattended?  It makes me wonder what weed seedlings I hadn't plucked within my spirit long before the children left on their vacation with their dad.  What seedlings of bitterness were secretly working their way through the soil of my soul, as I continued to grow and produce fruit.  The extent of my current struggle suggests something that has existed for quite some time.

The weed metaphor doesn't work perfectly with my tomato worm.  Work with me.  I really did tend to the weeds in my garden, so unfortunately, I don't have a weed problem to capture and include in my garden photo album.

But maybe the analogy can work for me.  Sometimes it's the weeds that are obvious.  We make darn sure we keep them plucked, but yet there can be other things lurking within our spirits that are more easy to overlook.  Like a tomato that ripens prematurely, and hides itself beneath the leaves of the plant, vulnerable to attacks from the outside.

Could it be that that is how the plant of my life has been overtaken by bitterness?  Or maybe I'm just trying too hard to connect my garden experience to my confessed problem.  Either way, it's on my heart, and I believe God is doing something with it, helping me to pluck the weed, and remove the rotten fruit.

I named this picture, "Cucumber of Unusual Size."  It's freakish, actually, and it needs to be picked, as it's sucking the life out of the plant, keeping other cucumbers from thriving.  I'm waiting for the kids to come home first, though.

I bet I can come up with an analogy here.  Ummmm...I can't put all of my energy into one aspect of my life, as life is multi-faceted, and requires careful and deliberate distribution of my time and energy, rather than having it all go toward one thing.  Or maybe there is another one about my need to hold off on doing what I need to do, waiting for the kids to return.  But I' not ready to face that one yet.

At any rate, I thank my prayer supporters who are lifting us up.  We need it.  the kids are due home this afternoon.