I look up from my weeding when I hear the door open.
"Do you want some gloves?" asks the man that I love so well.
I look down at my dirty fingers, knowing that it will take days to erase the evidence of digging in the flower beds bare-handed-- filthy fingernails, brown outlines in winter-roughened skin, green stains from battling dandelions. No, these are not model hands. They're mama hands, garden hands.
"Thanks. That would be great."
A few minutes later a pair of green gloves are tossed out the back door onto the patio. As I pull them onto the stained fingers, it almost seems silly. I'm already so dirty.
"How's it coming?" he says with a smile.
"It's coming along well. I'm about to quit soon. The sticker weeds are bad."
Sticker weeds. I'm sure they have some elegant-sounding Latin name, but you can't hide ugliness behind a fancy name. They hurt to pull, they root deep, they pop out of the ground tucked under nice plants like lilies and irises, sneaking their way into the flower beds, stealing the sun and nourishment from beautiful things like dianthus and hollyhocks.
"Do you want some music out here?"
"No thanks. I'm fine."
He's about to close the door, finish making lunch, feed four hungry kids-- the same four kids that picked fluffy dandelions all morning in the hopes that the few million seeds that have already blown all over the yard won't be joined by a few million more.
Suddenly, I have a burning thought, a confession.
"I know it sounds silly, but God talks to me when my hands are in the dirt."
Then comes the gentle reply from that man I love so well.
"I know. He talks to me too."
And wouldn't it be just like my God?
The curse was pronounced in a garden.
Sticker weeds, dandelions, dirty hands desperately pushing back the chaos for
a few more days.
My Jesus prayed and was arrested in a garden.
"Not my will but Thine..."
And yet God redeems the loss found in those other gardens by teaching me great things about grace,
and little plants grown up,
and weeds that crop up in my heart under the things I like to think are beautiful and lovely,
and His pruning of the branches,
and my bearing much fruit.
Oh, thank You, Lord, that gardens are not just for curses and loss,
but they are redeemed for teaching and blessing and beauty and speaking...
...speaking to Your daughter.
You know the one, Lord-- that messy one with the very dirty hands, who is ever so thankful
that the winter is past and the time for gardens and listening has come.
