Unruly Tomatoes

My tomatoes are a tangled mess, much like the scores of thoughts I have as I sit down to write. For whatever reason, this year the seedlings are robust and wild like I’ve never seen. Despite being only a few weeks old, they’ve already outgrown the space under the grow lights, their stems reaching nearly two feet, curling under the trays located above them. Broad, bright green leaves spread out every which way and tousle with one another in a desperate search for any light available in the limited space. I never meant for these grow shelves to become a centerpiece of my dining room decor, but the allure of seeding more and more plants for our vegetable garden is too strong an impulse, and I confess it is now gloriously out of hand. I wish our last frost date would race here a little sooner so I could begin rotating the trays ready for planting out to the garden and make space for freshly seeded trays. Then I could continue the process of royally over-doing this gardening thing.

I have trays full of hot and sweet peppers, a variety of brassicas, and one with a haphazard array of Walla Walla sweet onions looking like wild green hair I’ll eventually need to transplant one by one into the garden. Every time I take a moment to pause over the seedling trays, I feel a familiar lump in my throat and find it difficult to keep tears from welling up. Every little seed seems insignificant at the time of planting, but as germination happens, dynamic life bursts forth and reaches up, each one a little resurrection out of the dirt. It gets me very single time. I absolutely love witnessing the first emergence, the tiny one inch seedlings, the second set of leaves when they unfurl, and the general hope I find in seeing how—when the growing conditions and care are consistent—each tiny plant steadily gains strength, beauty, and the productivity they’re uniquely designed for.

The seedlings and unruly tomatoes are clearly ready for expansion into a season of fruitfulness ahead, and likewise I am here, surfacing once again on the internet, after a very long and difficult season of deep soul excavation, health challenges, and a life that looks quite different than it did just a handful of years ago. I hesitate to announce some particular kind of arrival to a new place, because the changing of seasons is usually not quite that tidy, but I’ve seen enough signs of spring in my soul to discern a move from whatever these past years have been into something refreshingly new and welcome. I am gaining strength—literal strength from lifting heavy weights with a trainer, and spiritual strength from precious time drawing closer to the Lord than ever before. Even though I still feel a bit bruised and jumbled inside at times, I am finally finding rest and reprieve that hasn’t been readily available for years.

So, I guess this is my awkward hello. I would like to become reacquainted with those of you I’ve lost touch with. I would like to share my gardening adventures and misadventures with you, as they might make you laugh with the joy and absurdity I myself regularly chuckle about. I also want to begin sharing the profound riches I found during my deep valley season of suffering that has spanned the last seven years. It has taken me all this time to make some sense of how and why God would allow an excursion through unbearable pain, life-altering changes, and struggles beyond my ability to control or productively cope. While profoundly difficult, God has done a great work of healing in my soul that has brought me freedom and restoration to the most broken parts. I have peace and joy. I have new vision.

Prayer is now as natural and as essential as breathing, and my eyes are firmly fixed on the Lord and His goodness rather than every disaster I hear rumors of. Fear no longer rules me. My faith has been tested—deeply shaped by the confounding paradox of my own weakness and reality that God, by His Spirit, continually supplies strength and power to overcome every kind of hardship directly to those who draw near to Him. He is unfathomably kind. The redemptive work of Christ in me has proven to be powerfully substantiated and unmistakably real. What I once knew in theory, I now know in experience, deep in my bones, right to my cells, and I have come alive in a way that continues to astound me, all thanks and glory be to God.

I have some trepidation about re-entry to the world of sharing my personal life online, as it does seem like the world is more severe and volatile than when I left, but I know I’m not the only one who has privately struggled through stuff not easily talked about while wounds are fresh and raw, and the answers or solutions in view do not actually relieve or resolve the pain for long stretches of time. If that is you—I have a great deal of compassion for your private battles. I am writing for you.

My prayer is that you would be comforted with the comfort of Christ. I pray you would go directly to the well that supplies living water, and that you, too, would find the substantial, healing work of Jesus in your own life, as I have. His promises are not empty, and His grace truly is sufficient, although, I admit learning this in practice is not usually a very fun experience. Still, the truth of it remains.

2 Corinthians 12:9 “And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.”

For now, I’ll keep moving my unruly tomatoes outside for the day, bringing them in at night until such time as I can get them to their ultimate destination in our high tunnel greenhouse. I will try to be back here with new writing periodically, or maybe even often if I can wrestle the words down. I have much to tell you—about the past seven years, my growing children (half of them are taller than me now), life on our farm, and the deep things God can do in valley seasons when we have our eyes on Him.