Clearing out the ground cover.... new growth is waiting

There are place in all of us where the ground cover has taken over.  Places where new growth can’t happen until we have taken the time, gotten dirty with the digging and cleared out the ground cover that is holding the new growth trapped underneath.

It was a beautiful fall day in Oregon and I had the day off work. In my frond yard was a flower bed just waiting to be liberated from the ground cover that had taken over during the previous tenets stay.  The soil was rich and ready and easily turnable at this time of year.  There were flowers to be planted, bulbs to be separated so that they could be re-energized during the cold Oregon winter.

Bulbs do that you know....  

While everything else lays dormant under the blanket of winter - those bulbs - they get re-energized by it.  They multiply and gain strength... (but that’s another blog for another day...)

I had been planning this “project” for a while.  Picture where things would go and things would be shifted.  Imagining it all in my dreams - gardeners do that -  We dream our gardens into being.  (again... another blog for another day...)

I got my music out with my tapes and an old “boom box” and set it on my porch next to my new cordless phone.  No high tech iphones or cd players/ipods in those days, just good ole’ fashion land lines and boom boxes. 

I waved to my neighbor (who was also my Pastor at the time) as he left for work that morning.  

I would start at one corner and not stop until I was on the other side. The roses.  They needed trimming down to the ground and at 6 feet tall that would mean a great deal of trimming.  Every year they had come back stronger, as if to say “No matter how much you trim, we will just come back, stronger and more brilliant than before so bring it on!”  Again, I knew that in trimming them back they would be protected from the harshness of the Oregon winter.  Their roots would be stimulated to grow and become stronger.  After the roses came the primary flower beds and that’s where I really got into the dirt and the digging.  It was a glorious day of pulling out those things that had taken over.  To get the ground open and ready for what was coming.  To reclaim my garden, my flower bed and in doing so create a place for new growth to happen.  

By the time my Pastor arrived home from work, I was on the other side of the flower bed almost finish with my own work.  Covered in dirt and gloriously content with what I had accomplished.  He smiled at me and said, “We have got to get you married...”,  I replied, “I would be doing the same thing...” We both laughed.  

By that evening I had cleared out the ground cover, separated and shifted all the bulbs that were underground, added new ones to fill in other spots, and created new places for all of the beautiful Peonies that had become so overcrowded that they could no longer grow properly.  

I could see spring.  I could see my yard in full bloom.  It wasn’t happening yet, but now I knew that it could.  All we (my flowers and I) needed to do was wait. Let winter do it’s work and pass.  Spring would come and with it an explosion of life and color in all of those new places that had been created.  

I look at my own life right now and I see those places where the great big love of God has been clearing out ground cover and shifting things around.  Like my own flower bed, I have not always felt “prepared” for the digging that has happened.  I could hear the music as it played over the garden of my heart and mind.  I could feel the hands pulling and tugging at the roots of things. 

I imagine that God has been dreaming of this garden of His in my heart and life for a very long time.  He sees the full bloom.  He knows where the perfect spots are and where the ground cover has taken over and needs to be removed.  He sees the roses.  Those glorious tall places that still need to be trimmed each year to get the roots stirred up and regenerated. 

The question is never “Will God’s Loving hand come in and tend my garden?”  He is always present and always ready. 

The true question is this... “Will I open my heart and let Him?” 

This is my prayer today.  

 Lord teach my heart to be ready. Strengthen me when I am tender with the clearing and remind me of your vision for me. Clear out the things that hinder the new explosion of color coming with Spring. Bring the life - the new growth -  that Your love has been dreaming for me.  

My Beloved is in His garden... Will I go out to meet Him?  

A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse,

A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.

Your plants are an orchard of Pomegranates

With pleasant fruits, fragrant henna with spikenard, Calamus and cinnamon, 

With all trees of frankincense, Myrrh and aloes,

With all the chief spices -

A fountain of living water, and streams from Lebanon.

Awake, O north wind and come, O south!

Blow upon my garden.  That it’s spices may flow out.

Let my Beloved come to His garden and eat of its pleasant fruit.

Song of Songs 4:12-16