Planting

I don’t have much space for flowers where we live now, but every spring I find that I experience a visceral craving to reconnect with God’s creation by digging my fingers into the earth and planting some flowers in the space I do have.

Our spring was so cold and rainy this year that I hadn’t had a chance to do my flowers yet. I felt anxious and behind. When Big Guy brought home a small flat of flowers for me a few days ago, I breathed a deep sigh of relief.

I gathered my bags of soil, peat moss, and manure and sat surrounded by my flowerpots. With my flat of flowers in front of me, I began to sort out the baby flowers and plan where they would go.

Love, faith, and hope in the flower bed

Planting is a worshipful experience for me.

Let me explain.

I delight in the shapes, hues, and scents of the different flowers, marveling that God created such variety in the delights to be found in different flowers. I thank Him for letting me experience another spring and for providing me with the place and money for the flowers I enjoy so much. I am in awe of the many ways He invites us to participate in his continuing work of creation.

The entire time I am planting, I am praising God.

As I gratefully plant my flowers, I find that I am filled with love, faith, and hope.

Planting is a loving act for me, and I apply tender care and tending to the new flowers. I hum while I plant. I think about how happy I am to have these little flowers in my life and how much I want them to thrive. I dig and pat with a firm but gentle touch. I water carefully.

As I remove the flowers from the flat where they’d grown and move them into their new home, I do so with faith that the transplanting will work and that they will survive the change. I don’t trust my own ability to plant them well, but I do have faith that the way God designed these flowers will make them strong enough to adjust to their larger living space.

When I plant, I do so with a hopeful eye toward the future, thinking not just about how much space these small flowers need now, but how much space they will need after they’ve grown. I plant them with their growth in mind. Right now, the individual flowers in the pots look a little lonely—but I know that with continuing nurture, these individual potted flowers will meld into lovely displays that are beautiful because of how the flowers are together.

It is messy work for me, this planting of flowers. I get dirt on my legs and under my fingernails. Somehow I always manage to get some on my face, too. When I come inside and look in the mirror, I always have to laugh at what a disaster I am—dirty face, hair that has escaped my hair clip and gotten frizzy, and always some sweat added into the mix.

The face I see in the mirror after planting also has one more thing that outshines the mess—a smile. After I’ve put the work into planting, no matter how dirty or sore I am, I am always filled with deep satisfaction and joy.

Planting in the marriage bed

As I went out this morning to delight in my flowers and appreciate the results of the work I’d done with what God had designed. I was reminded that I also experience love, faith, and hope when doing other kinds of planting.

I thought of the ways our marriage bed had blossomed.

Despite my many years of resisting and avoiding sex, once my heart turned toward my husband, I did many things in love, with tender care for his heart even as I was both firm and gentle with myself in my struggle.

My efforts to plant new habits and thoughts in our sex life was a leap of faith for me. I didn’t trust my own efforts, but I did have faith that God would somehow put my efforts to good use in our marriage.

I worked on my issues with an eye toward the future. I didn’t know how our fully flowered marriage would look, but I knew that it would be much better than where we were. Over time, we blossomed from two lonely spouses into a lovely marriage that is beautiful because of how we are together and because of the intimacy we have grown.

I’ve often said that the work I did to address my struggles with sex is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done—and I also say that it was worth every bit of effort.

And the entire time, I was praising God for the insight He had shown me, the courage He had helped me find, and the frequent encouragement He sent to me in ways large and small.

It was messy work for me, this planting of new thoughts and habits related to sex. While there was no dirt, there was a lot of emotional sweat and heart soreness.

And you know what else? It filled me with deep satisfaction and joy.

Planting in your marriage

If you’ve struggled much with sex, you might feel like you’re finally getting around to planting after a cold and rainy spring. You may feel anxious and behind.

Just the prospect of gathering all your tools and laying out the work in front of you can be overwhelming.

The work may be messy, and it may make you ache a bit. I want to encourage you to do the work anyway.

Do the work with love. Have faith that God will pull you through, even if it’s hard for you to understand. Have hope for the ways your marriage bed—and your marriage—will blossom as you do the work and continue to nurture what you’ve been doing.

My prayer for you is that your planting will yield a marriage bed filled with delight, deep satisfaction, and joy.

Image credit | Chris Taylor