One of my happy places is right in my own backyard. For me, pulling out a ten-foot-long weed is very fulfilling. It has been a long, learn as you go experience. Living in apartments buildings most of my early years, meant having a pot outside next to my pet turtle, which eventually took a nosedive off the 4th floor apartment. or was thrown overboard by my somewhat naive little sister. To be fair, maybe she thought turtles could fly.

Anyway, gardening eluded me until after I married and settled down. It became a sort of sanctuary for me to dig in the dirt as if I was working my way to China – a common mistake for beginning gardeners. As time went by, I overcame that problem, but bit into more than I could chew when I attacked our hill garden. You see, it was all grass at first. I feared that my husband would wind up as roadkill in the street as he made his way down with the power lawn mower. So, I made it my mission one Mother’s Day, to create a garden out of it. I used perennial plants, which I knew nothing about. The ground cover plants would fill things in nicely, but I didn’t realize they would also invade everything else I planted.

So, armed with only a small shovel and two different sized spades, I felt I was about to conquer Mt. Everest. It turned into quite a showplace after about five years of digging. What I didn’t anticipate, was having to maneuver across this garden wall to remove the weeds. My neighbors would stand in front of their windows with little scorecards to rate my performance.

I still love digging in the earth. There’s some therapeutic about mud. It gives me a lift to release the hold of creeping Charlie or the infamous dandelion. It kind of reminds me of getting to the heart of my sinful nature. It is a lifetime battle to weed out the icky stuff in our lives, and truth be told, there is absolutely no way we can erase the hold of sin. There is a solution, however. God provided a Savior to take that horrific, invasive tangle of sin to the cross and die to remove it. He also gave us the promise that we would continue on after death in His perfect paradise.

Thank you, Jesus for removing the sting of death and providing a garden beyond all human comprehension.