God and Garlic

After my ever-present coffee, church was next on my agenda. My takeaway from the service today was about being the person who bears fruit.

The last few weeks have been a struggle for me – conflict with my family, my budget, and my health. It was really, and I mean REALLY hard to see God’s hand in all of this, but in the midst of this drama, I received a message that helped calm the storms I felt were battering me from all sides: Patience.

Now, I will be the first to admit that patience is not one of my strengths, so to get this message, well, I tried to come up with reasons I needed to be patient. I feel now that God was answering another’s prayer by answering mine too. I’m going to remain cryptic here, I think God’s answer to my prayers at the time were “Just not now…”, but now that I can see that things are working themselves out, I sit back and give thanks.

So back to “the person who bears fruit.” I’ve been struggling with the idea of turning my whole back yard into a massive garden. To me it’s a waste to not utilize the area in this manner, but my struggle has been about what to do with all the produce I assume I’ll be growing next spring. There’s only Hubbin and me, and my daughter if she wants anything, so what do I do with the rest? When the pastor talked about bearing fruit, I wondered if God’s message was directed at my own struggle. Yes, I can spread the message, but to help feed the masses when so many have none, is that in itself not a worthy use of my time and effort?

By the way, I planted garlic this past week when I finally felt well enough to go outside and do something. Now, that’s a leap of faith for me, as well as a demonstration of patience. Garlic takes about nine months to grow, yes, about the same amount of time as it takes to grow a baby, so about next June, when everything else is beginning to sprout, my garlic should be ready to harvest. I have not been uber-successful at gardening, so perhaps I’m overthinking the rest. Perhaps it’s time to leave it to God for a sign?

*Praying for guidance. And Patience*