I was a ghostwriter on this story for months, but The Author of this story has been writing it since I was formed. So, all thanks be to Him. My Gardener.
The Garden
1 Corinthians 3:7
“So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.”
Like most gardens, there are many different species of plant life; all needing to be tended to, cared for, acknowledged, and seen for what they are and how they can not only thrive individually but together as well. Some need an abundance of water and maintenance, others are mostly self-sufficient, but all need quality soil and a certain level of care to survive. None can survive without a Gardener who knows exactly how to care for each particular plant and an environment where they can all co-exist together, to create something really beautiful. This is transformation. This is community formed through harmony and unity. This is relationship with our Creator.
When I think about my current physical and emotional state, the first thing that comes to mind is “wrecked.” My body has slowed down long enough for decades of suppressed feelings to catch up to it. I’ve felt physically sick for a solid three years now. I’ve felt mentally and emotionally sick, with present symptoms, since I was 17 years old. Today, I am 30 and just now learning what healing looks like.
That is over 10 years of anxiety, doubt, fear, and a long period of self-destruction. For over a decade, I have taught my brain to “cope” with a present raging panic attack, but I concealed the fear, doubt, and anxiety and I began to disassociate into my own little world that only I had the key to. A world, that I called “my bubble” to friends and family, was more like a secret garden. It was really peaceful there, but it was romanticized, not an actual reality. And when someone tried to disturb that space I created, the panic would start to rise. Can you blame me though? I felt safe there, in that world, my garden, but as I locked myself inside, I forfeited the ability to heal.
When I stepped outside of the garden, into the reality of a broken world, I had no self-protection or emotional survival skills. I was just a fragile flower that could so easily float off with the wind of brokenness, that I saw all around me, so, I’d retreat to the garden again, until one day I was forced out. My garden didn’t exist anymore, not in the way I was used to, it was overrun by panic and anxiety.
I was hiding in a reality that did not exist, anyway. I didn’t have the tools or the “weapons” to defend my secret garden. I didn’t even have the skills or knowledge to water that garden and make it fruitful. It was just, stagnant. Unattended to. Slowly suffocating from lack of life, maintenance, or a gardener who knew how to care for it. It needed an actual Creator. Someone who knew about life and how to sustain it. I realized the key to my world, that I held on to so tightly, so dearly, just represented a sense of control that I was unwilling to forfeit, but had to anyway. So, I left the garden and entered into the pit……
the stone
Proverbs 19:3
“A person’s own folly leads to their ruin, yet their heart rages against the Lord.”
This part of the story is narrated by a version of myself that was a child. I understand that with all stories, there may be many different narrations, but this was mine....
There is grace to be found for some of our parents who did not have the parenting resources at their fingertips, like our generation does. Parents who were just trying to figure it all out in a society that had beliefs and values for home life essentially forced onto them, who were just trying to do their absolute best. Parents who had their versions of childhood trauma passed down to them. There is no shame, no blame; only forgiveness, compassion, and understanding that our parenting paths may in some ways look a whole lot different, but in some ways remain the same.
My parents have always been providers, protectors, hard workers with helpful hands, and human beings who were not given a rule book on how to raise children. I understood that more clearly when I became a mom myself. How hard it is to raise children while still trying to heal from your past, whether that be from family, society, or outside forces at work.
So, to my parents: I quite literally would not be where I am today, as a wife, mom, and friend, without you both. I love you dearly.
A DECADE OR SO EARLIER.....
I was a “strong-willed” child, as most would describe me, but was I? I never felt strong. I never felt willful. I just felt as if I was a deeply emotional child, with a desperate need to be understood, and if not that, at least a desperate need to be heard, growing up in a time where society would deem that as “too much,” or “too emotional,” or “too loud.” The reality was really that I could just feel everything. I feel past the depth of my bones. I feel others' pain physically placed on me. I feel the energy around me; good, bad, despair, confusion, joy, and my body, in turn, would respond to whatever emotion was around me and adapt to it. Deep stuff, right? “You are just too sensitive. It’s not that serious”, is what I heard often, but to me, it was. Was I too sensitive? Was I strong-willed? Too emotional? I believe, since I was created, that I was gifted as a “feeler,” but the downside to being a feeler is that, if you don’t have a light to guide you, you can take on too much and self-implode.
My childhood came with a very large family. Grandparents, on both sides, who came from immediate families of at least 3-7 children; that meant lots of aunts, uncles, cousins, and even a great-grandma who was around for nineteen years of my life. Most of my family’s story sounded the same; parents that came from little, that would in turn inspire a period of hard work that eventually would lead to a materially fruitful life. We were fortunate, privileged even. Ancestors who worked hard for the next generation, a loud childhood with lots of adventure, learning, love, and a large support system for when it was time for the children of that generation to experience adulthood for themselves.
Of course, none of this came without its periods of darkness, trials, and despair for my family members. This looked like tragic accidents, loss of children, loss of spouses, divorce, mental illness, alcoholism, addiction, loss of siblings, abandoned parental figures, repeated cancer diagnoses, an Alzheimer’s diagnosis, family members taking in other family members due to death, lack of money, or abandonment, miscarriages, physical health preventing typical daily routines. And the list goes on. Deep-rooted pain and trauma. Valleys that would require a type of spiritual savior to get them through. So, why should my story be any different?
In our home, I had one parent who was deeply religious and one who was not. We still attended church all the same. As I got a little older, the religious dynamic of my parents felt like balance, freedom of choice for us to steward our own spiritual paths, and sometimes confusion, if I am being completely honest. I grew up in the church, I knew the Bible stories, the expectations religion placed on society, the rights, the wrongs, the do’s, the don’ts, and the steps to baptism that would lead to a life as a Christian.
Attending church, I felt as though I was taught how to be “a good Christian,” but not nearly enough about who Christ actually was, if at all. Who was this man I was supposed to be serving, essentially? Why did I need His approval? Why is He so strict, and at times, what felt like, unloving? Why did it feel like love was preached every Sunday, but not necessarily being lived out into the world? Why did it feel like there were stipulations on that love? Why were there “outcasts?” Why were people being turned away? This did not seem like something I wanted to be a part of. He did not seem like someone I needed.
As a child, I already felt a need to be understood, and now, as an adolescent, my interpretation of what was being preached to us every Sunday was not someone I felt would understand me. So, as I started to walk away, it seemed as though the hope and peace were slowly leaving my soul to stay behind. But I would be fine right? It was better than staying in a circle of peers that I did not relate to, or following someone, who would never understand me. Confusion was at the tip of my spirit, but I let my questions die inside of me and walked on. I would find my light. A light that honored not just me, but everyone. This way was better.
As a feeler; who was now walking my own created path, the first thing I felt was oddly enough, relief. I didn’t have to adhere to all these rules, per se. I didn’t have to live up to what felt like unrealistic expectations anymore. I didn’t have to try to get to know this man in the sky, that I had no interest in knowing, because I felt like He could never truly know and accept the depths of me. I was imperfect. Deeply flawed. I had outbursts. I didn’t feel patient. I wasn’t kind all the time. One thing I did know, was that, at the core of my being, I deeply cared for others and if He didn’t care for everyone, like I did, then I was not interested in hearing His reasons why. What started as a child needing to be understood turned into a teenager who was nothing but self-righteous, and down in the depths of my soul, there was nothing but fear.
I was now walking in a world, with a masked perception of what spiritual freedom looked like. I was a dainty little flower, desperate to be a tree. A tree resembled strength, it had firm roots, and it was unshakeable, but I did not have a Gardener to help me become a tree, so I became stone. At the time, it felt like this was my only option. I didn’t have the tools to plant a tree and maintain it, I had to survive. So, I chose the path of hardened rock, and along came my good ol’ friend, self-destruction, to accompany me along the way…
the pit
Psalm 86: 12-13
“I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forver. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead.”
Disclosure: this excerpt of the story contains real-life stories from my past, without going into grave detail. I am acknowledging that I make no excuses for my actions, only an attempt to explain where my feet and heart were planted at that time, and the deepest apology to anyone I may have hurt along the way…
The relief started to fade and the darkness slowly crept its way in. The thing about spiritual darkness is you would think it would be completely visible, obvious even, like the storm clouds overtaking the sun in an instant, but it's not; it’s quiet, completely unseen, slowly taking its time suffocating your soul. What I thought was a manifested life of freedom, peace, joy, contentment, and abundance, obtained by my own will and fruition, was just the darkness seeing the many things that my spirit had craved and masking those things to hide the ego, greed, pride, disdain, anxiety, jealousy, and hatred that it was slowly forming inside of me. Quietly manipulating my soul.
I had no spiritual protection. Emotional protection was something I never learned. Guidance was something I frequently rejected. I was blind to correction. So, this is the point where my path slammed into self-destructive behavior. I went from a child with outbursts to a young adult with an argumentative spirit, an ego of self-proclamation, a heart of resistance, and a mind with really bad ideas.
This began the very long years of poor decision-making. Decisions that I convinced myself were a part of “learning” and “growth,” but they were only leading me to my spiritual death. Don’t get me wrong, I did learn from these choices I made, but that was paired with many years of guilt and shame. So, without going into extensive detail, let's unpack these decisions I made along the way…
The first thing I immediately clung to was a sense of adolescent “freedom.” I found this freedom in the form of boys. Too many of them. I found it in the form of substances and partying. And I especially found it in pushing the boundaries of good and evil. I was coming into the new era of a society that worshipped self-serving tendencies, especially for women, and I absolutely loved it—craved it even. It was liberating. Addicting almost. The problem was that I took this wonderful movement of women's empowerment and used it to my advantage to excuse behaviors that were downright selfish and cruel. Nothing was off-limits for me. Cheating. Lying. Manipulating. These were all repeated tendencies that carried me closer and closer to the pit.
I regularly imagine the symbolism of a spiritual cage and how my spirit, at this time, was absolutely terrified of it. Anything that resembled the sense of being put into this cage, I would bolt. This would show up in many ways, someone expressing their feelings towards me, family who would convict me of my behavior, jobs that felt too secure, friends who wanted better for me, all ending in me bolting. I did not want to face falling in love, giving up my lifestyle, or being tied down to a job I knew I would hate, and I especially did not want to look in the mirror at who I had become. I knew what I would see on the other side. Pain. Shame. Someone who was broken. Someone incapable of healing. I wanted to be free of feeling anything at all, but as we know, being a feeler was my entire being. I just did not want to self-implode from feeling any longer. I couldn’t bear it. Wouldn’t survive it. So, I kept chasing the wind and encountered what crippling anxiety felt like, for the first time….
It was two in the morning, and I sat straight up from my sleep, unable to breathe. Unable to think of anything other than the fact that I was dying. I was about to die. My heart felt like it was stopping and I needed to get to the ER immediately. I called for my mom and told her to start the car and that we needed to leave now. I could see the emotions spread across her face; confusion first and then a little sliver of fear. Fear for her child that was in pain of some sort but she did not know from what. So, the first thing she did was have me sit on the edge of the bed with her and speak the protection of God over me, and to be quite frank, I hated that. Yes, hate. I hated the idea of talking about God and heaven when I was on the verge of what I thought was a physical death. Especially because I was not so sure I even believed either of those things existed. When I died, that was it. No one to save me. Just darkness.
I immediately tried to bolt, as I typically did, and yelled to her that she was not hearing me. This was life and death and she was just sitting there, praying!? My dad came in the room and offered to “take me to the hospital”, but he only ever intended to drive me around until I slowly calmed and fell back asleep, and it worked. This went on for months. I was terrified to go to sleep every single night, in fear that I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. I was terrified to drive a car, to be in public, to go to school, and to have one of these “attacks” happen in front of other people, so I started to avoid everything and disassociate. I didn’t know what was happening to me, but I did know I didn’t want anyone else to see it.
Then there came the day that I had an attack come upon me in the doctor's office. My dad was with me and he told the doctor, “This is what we have been trying to figure out. What do you think is happening to her?” The doctor explained to both of us that she believed I had generalized anxiety paired with the occasional panic attack. Anxiety? Panic attacks? I didn’t feel anxious. I didn’t panic. Well, except when I was waking up in the middle of the night believing I was dying I guess. Okay, so what did this mean? Medication? No way. I didn’t want that. Therapy? And what, I am just supposed to sit on some couch and pour my heart out to some stranger? Hard pass. I’ll figure this out on my own. Said no one ever with anxiety, right...
After I quickly realized this was not something I was going to “get over,” I agreed to therapy. Which turned into three years of therapy, still with some resistance to medication. I was taught how to manage the panic attacks and they subsided to very infrequent occurrences, but the anxiety seemed to linger. I was tired and avoidant and on edge; I just wanted to feel better so I agreed to a very low dose of anxiety medication for a time, and it truly helped, but the anxiety still lingered, just farther below the surface of my soul. Ever present. Just not debilitating. I could live life like this, though. This was manageable I supposed. This mindset lasted for years. Too many years. I never fully healed; I just concealed the things that made me fearful.
My life on the outside looked fun, light, and free; on the inside, however, it was dark. Very dark. There was a surface level of panic. Emotions of fear, shame, regret, resentment, and sadness bottled down so deep, that I forgot how to feel at all. Or didn’t want to feel, I suppose. So, numbness took its place and all I felt was an extreme tiredness take over me. I was tired of fighting. So tired. So, I laid down, with what felt like fire and chaos all around me, into the pit where I was fine to stay…
The new garden my safe haven. my sanctuary.
“In English, we say: ‘God’s plan is better than mine.’ In poetry, we say: ‘A seed does not understand why it is buried, yet in surrender, it becomes a garden.’” – Letters of Annawin
When I listen to other people’s testimonies, most, if not all of them have this “ah-ha” moment where God showed up for them and essentially saved them. In a split second. Never looking back. I didn’t have that moment. Mine felt like it came slowly over time, with the repeated choice of surrender, daily, sometimes multiple times a day. I don’t have that “ah-ha” moment with God, but I do know that I was saved from a spiritual death. That much is obvious to me.
There I was lying in the pit of a spiritual darkness. I was fine here, as long as I could lay down for a while and rest. I didn’t have my hand reaching up for saving. I wasn’t pleading with some divine being to forgive me and bring me back, but He came anyway.
Looking back now, I picture divinely being picked up and carried out of the darkness and planted on a new path, not a path that I chose for myself, but a new one, guided by actual light. I didn’t know why I was here, on this new path, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be on it, but I walked down it anyway, and with that came the most unexpected news I would ever receive, there was new life, growing inside of me.
I was going to be a mom. Cue the sound of tires coming to a screeching halt. A baby? I should be ecstatic right? Grateful even. But the first thing I felt was panic. I was 25 years old. Unmarried, like that even mattered to me, at that time, but I knew it mattered to others. I had not ever missed a pill. Truly, how could this even be possible? Do I even want to be a mom? These were some of the many thoughts I sat with, alone, for two solid weeks, keeping the news to just myself and my now husband. Of course, I knew I had the option to stay pregnant if I wanted to, and I will not lie, for a split second I weighed my options. However, all the way past my bones to the depth of my soul I knew I wanted to be a mom and to have this baby. No matter how scared I was and how much my life was going to change, the sacrifice felt immeasurable to the life slowly growing inside of me. That much felt like an honor, a privilege, a divine blessing. Little did I know this baby would play the main role in finding me a Gardener to water this new garden I wanted to build for her, for us, our family, that I would one day call our home. Our life together.
As a mom, I felt the immediate desire to protect overcome me. Even though the life inside of me was still forming, I felt desperate to create a world for us that was sacred, soft, simple, even. I wanted this garden to be special, but it felt like I kept coming up short on how to make that space thrive. This is the point in my story where the New Garden, which was my life, began to form. It was slow. Intentional. A bit messy. Still lost to care, but there was something entirely different about the soil, this time. It was clean.
Four Years later……..
Those beautiful blue eyes, curly hair, and a mind with the brightest, most colorful imagination looked at me with complete wonder and a curiosity so deep, that I did not know how to manage it at times, as I bounced her baby brother on my hip and asked me a reasonable question. The question was not the problem, the fact that I did not have an answer is what stirred my spirit. I know that I am not a knower of all things, but this felt like something I could have given to her and I felt like I was falling short. I quickly responded with, “You know, that’s a great question, but I really don’t know the answer to it. Can mommy try and find out and we can talk about this soon?” While she agreed and moved on to something else to occupy her mind, I was struck with determination.
I opened the bag from the store and pulled out the book. I knew of this book, my whole childhood was centered around the stories in it, but why did I not know a single thing about it? I surely should have retained enough information, to have a conversation with my curious little daughter about it. So, I opened it, with the slightest bit of hesitation, and began reading…
I am a skeptic at heart. Curious to a fault, I guess you could say. I wonder if that’s where my daughter gets it from, but she didn’t seem doubtful, she seemed eager. As I turned page after page, my curiosity grew, but so did the confusion. Why was I resonating with all of the characters, in this story, who seemed to be the “problem?” They didn’t seem problematic, they seemed…human. Lost. Searching for something that felt out of their grasp. A garden of their own, where they felt safe. That is what we are all searching for, right? Peace, joy, contentment, unity, a life built around intention and love. Of course that wasn’t going to look easy for them. I mean give them a break, they just escaped slavery and had been traveling in a wilderness for 40 years with complete uncertainty. This book was odd. Not at all what I expected, but I was desperate to know how the story would end. Would they find peace? Security? Would they make it to their destination? I wanted that so badly for them.
Story after story after story, I was conflicted with the same thoughts, these characters deserve some grace, someone who understands them. Someone to save them. Why so much pressure? Also, why are some characters held to this higher standard and some excused for, in my opinion, inexcusable behavior? Why was this man, they either looked up to or down right rejected so…..emotional? And probably the two most important questions I asked myself was, why do I see myself in these stories and who. is. this. main character of the book.
My brain could not process both questions, so the next thing I did was remove myself from seeing myself in these stories. I removed my opinion. I removed my expectations and focused solely on the main character. I had to concentrate on either one or the other, and I was more curious about him. I was completely engulfed. Page after page continued to turn. What was strange was that, it was not that I opened this book and found an immediate sense of clarity and everything leading up to that moment suddenly made sense; I was still very much confused by what I was reading, but there was this dimly lit wonder there, that kept nudging my spirit forward, to find out more.
I don’t remember hearing these things about the main character on Sunday mornings? Unless I have just been completely mistaken, I do not think this is how society and past cultures have portrayed him for the past 2000 years? I don’t see any of these “political views”, I’ve heard about, anywhere in this book? Am I reading this wrong? He seems….gentle? He seems present. Compassionate. Understanding. I never felt a sense of peace in my life up until this point, not until I started searching these pages. Wait, why did I feel a sense of peace? I am the girl with anxiety. Where is this coming from? Why do I feel…..free?
I finished the book and all I could do was sit there in complete shock with tears streaming down my eyes. This main character was a Gardener of some sort. He watered the testimony’s of countless women during a time when society devalued their voices. He cared for the sick, gave food to the poor, fought fearlessly for children, elevated the marginalized and oppressed, flipped the tables of greed, and protected the vulnerable. He created radical change while watering other's gardens. This is the gardener I had been searching for, for my new garden. One who would fight for my life to thrive. One who would tend to my needs when my soul felt withered. One who would see my uniqueness and understand the beauty behind it. One who would water my spirit and make it come alive.
After all of this, I sat with my daughter on the front porch and said “I think I have the answer to your question now” and with her sweet little grin of acknowledgment, the conversation began..
current day...
It has been over two years since that front porch conversation with my daughter, and our entire lives have been changed, especially mine. While I still sit with questions from time to time, my life has been upended into a type of peace that surpasses all understanding, an ever present comfort in knowing we are tended to, an intentional, slow lifestyle that I never thought to be attainable, and a type of healing that always felt out of my grasp. I will never run out of gratitude for simply being enough. Enough to be saved. Saved is an understatement, it is a revolutionary shift that can only be attributed to a divine force. A gardener, who said, “She’s mine. I will care for her.”
So who is this “Gardener” you ask? Well, that part comes next…
