Welcome To My Garden
As a little girl, I watched my dad spend hours in the garden. He was a professional landscaper, so it made perfect sense that he would spend his days working in the garden. But after grueling, hot hours in the sun tending someone else’s garden, he would come home and rush right back out to tend to his own. I know because I was his shadow.
By taking the time to watch my dad tenderly prune, coax, and nurture his delicate flowers while aggressively fighting the weeds that would otherwise strangle off their lives, or forcefully stir the freshly made compost in with the old in order to ensure his precious flowers had the best nutrients added back into the soil, his love for his garden became obvious and unquestionable. Such intention, such purpose- these attributes were never more discernible in him than when he attended to his gardener’s chores.
Those hours may have been labor for him, but for me, following alongside him or hiding in a far off corner so that he did not see me watching him, those hours were some of my most peaceful. I felt safe knowing he was near. I felt loved. I felt like he would always be there to protect me.
I turned to a different garden, an inner garden, when my life was swallowed up in turmoil, and I dug with the same deliberateness that I had seen my dad model as he worked in his. The difference is that the Rose that awaited me in my garden tended me back as I opened my heart to my first Father.
In “I AM”-Renewal From Within The Garden, I learn to understand the actions of my other Father with the same awe, love, and respect that I felt watching my dad as a tag-along shadow. We are our Father’s flowers, and He tends to us with the same intention that my dad cared for his. It took a terrible loss and a time of emotional upheaval for me to connect with my Father, but as I did, He weeded the garden of my heart, restored my soul, and renewed my spirit.
I invite you to begin your journey to restore your soul today through the pages of “I AM” Renewal From Within The Garden. May you also feel tended to that you may also stand and say I am.
