The Courage to Water

May 9th. That’s the day I started my backyard garden. 87 long days. Days of dreaming, planting, watering and waiting. A lot of waiting. I’ll be honest, when I counted up the days, I thought it would’ve been longer. It feels like a long, hot summer. After the initial harvest in June, July has brought nothing but vines and leaves. The moment the sight of a new pepper begins to bloom, the garden thief steals it. It’s been an invisible summer.

Every day, I’m watching the weather to see if I need to water the garden or if God’s going to do it for me. My thoughts at work drift to the garden, “am I watering too much…not enough”? Some days I even water the garden before work so it gets maximum usage out of each water droplet throughout the day. Armed with insecticidal soap, I search the leaves for signs of weakness, blight, insects. 

The truth is, I have no idea what I’m doing. Afterall, I’ve only been a backyard gardener for 87 days. 

I can’t make the sun shine.
I can’t make the garden grow.
I can’t keep the pepper thief away.

I can’t make the sunflower seeds bloom.

What I can do is have the courage to keep showing up and watering those plants. I can trust God with the process of sowing and reaping. I can have faith in the process. I can have hope that it will work out. 

Then I wonder, what if faith isn’t simply believing it will all work out. What if faith is picking up the watering can and showing up every day to simply do the work of watering. 

We celebrate the harvest. The bounty that is so instagram-worthy. But the diligence of showing up every day to do the simple, routine, not sexy at all tasks, like watering…no one celebrates that.

Life is kinda like that. We post pictures of graduations, but not all the tears shed over friendship drama. We share all the pictures of the weddings, but not the broken hearts that paved the way. We talk about success, but not waking up at 5am to build the dream. 

What if the actual success is the showing up part? Choosing to water the dream every single day. 

What other areas of our lives are we watering during an invisible season? Maybe it’s a marriage that feels ordinary, but grows stronger with every walk around the block. Maybe it’s a career that feels out of reach, but everyday we’re learning something new. Maybe it’s words of love and wisdom sown into a child’s heart that doesn’t yet seem to be taking root. 

Invisible doesn’t mean ineffective. 

Seeds grow into the dirt and darkness of the soil, before we see any hint of life. The seeds we sow into our marriage, relationships, careers are all taking root. So no, we can’t make the seeds grow. But what we can do is to choose to show up every day with our watering can and water that garden, marriage, relationship, and dream. 

Which reminds me, I need to head out back and water that garden.