I love English Gardens

I love English gardens. They are a combination of the civilized and the wild. One of my favorite pictures is a family heirloom of an old English garden. I am inspired and challenged by it each year as the weather warms. I have a hillside that is perfect for creating this garden of beauty, except for one problem. That hillside is also perfect for growing briers and rambling vines. For many years, I would get out on the hillside as soon as it was warm enough and begin to cut back the briers and vines and plant flowers, small trees, flowering plants, etc. It was a thing of wild beauty. It wasn’t long into the season however that it became more a wild wicked thing than a thing of beauty. The briers came back and brought some family with them. The vines seemed to delight in wrapping themselves around everything they touched, threatening to choke the life from the young plants. I would look at the tangled mess and give up, determined to do better next season. This pattern repeated itself for years, until finally I just gave up and conceded defeat.
I made a mistake year one, which I continued to make year after year. In my anxiousness to get started and see immediate results, I failed to lay the foundation for my garden. I didn’t put in the preparation necessary to realize the dream of a lasting English garden. Was it because I didn’t know how to prepare the ground? No, I had many people explain the steps to preparing for a successful garden. The problem was with myself. I wanted immediate results. Clipping back the briers and vines to the ground level was the immediate “fix” that made the temporary cosmetic changes I was looking for. I didn’t want to do the work necessary in order to make those cosmetic changes permanent. I didn’t take the time, or maybe I simply refused, to address the “root” problem.
As I think about my English garden dream, I am reminded of how much our life is like that hillside. We have an idea, a picture, of how we want our life and our relationship with the Lord to look. We try to achieve that picture, that relationship, by simply making temporary cosmetic changes that only affect the surface of who we are. The real work required to make the permanent, deep down to the marrow changes is long, difficult, and even painful. That level of difficulty and pain, or simply the fear of experiencing them, keeps us from getting in there and getting our hands dirty with some good old-fashioned hard work. Real changes require digging deep, below the surface, to our attitudes and beliefs that drive our actions. It requires digging up and cutting away the things that hinder the beauty that our Creator and the true Gardener wants to grow in our lives. That digging up and cutting away is almost always painful. It involves getting rid of things that our sinful nature would really like to hold onto. Things like pride, anger, hurt, worry, bitterness, and unforgiveness, just to name a few. Time spent addressing “root” issues is time eternally spent. It’s necessary for our growth. It is a slow and difficult process. It’s doesn’t just happen. We can’t expect to make those kinds of permanent changes with minimal work. It just doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way on my hillside and it certainly doesn’t work that way in our lives. Don’t let the pain and difficulty scare you! The work is always worth that beauty that will come from it!

I was setting in Church yesterday morning next to my mom and I was thinking. I wanted to share this thought with her but since I can't, I will just share it here.
Mom, as I hear you singing here beside me today, I am carried back in time or maybe time just ceases to exist, or maybe this is a glimpse of what eternity is. Eternity, where the Holy Spirit fills up time, space, and memory, where we are transported out of the physical broken bodies and minds of the flesh and into the perfect, complete spiritual, eternal beings that we were created to be. The flesh and mind that has been ravaged by Alzheimer's disease drops away and the Spirit places a song on your lips-Your soul sings out- and it carries me back to younger days sitting beside you worshiping the Father together. Maybe it transports me forward into Heaven where we will gather around the throne worshiping our Savior. Whichever it may be, I am grateful and in awe of the gift of the present to listen to you, unhindered, worshiping Christ in song together. Thank you mom for your unwavering Spirit and testimony even in the midst of your Alzhiemers. Thank you Jesus for the gift of the Comforter who makes all things good...