Gardening for Dummies

So, I know nothing about gardening.  Seriously.  I know more about rocket science, which makes me an excellent candidate for attempting to grow a garden this spring.  Like any good gardener-wannabe, I purchased several books on gardening, read ten pages, understood nothing, and decided how hard could this possibly be.  I mean, come on, doesn't food just spring from the ground.....naturally....in some places?

Rather than shoot for the moon and because my husband, well aware of my track record and black thumb (I managed to kill a plant the nursery assured was impossible to kill), strongly suggests I aim a little lower, like the back porch, instead of digging up our entire beautifully landscaped backyard, I opt for a container garden.   I did manage to grasp from my books that I need self-watering containers and seeds, so I load my two junior gardeners into the car, and we head off to navigate Lowe's, which requires a separate book.

I am familiar enough to know where the garden department is, so Annie, Connor, and I decide to tackle plant selection first.  "Mommy, you have to get strawberries!"  Anna exclaims.  "Ok," I respond, while pulling Connor's hands away from a shelf of tomatoes he is seconds away from wearing.  I walk to the lettuce section and mull over the thousands of options:   Bibb lettuce, Romaine lettuce, butter lettuce, arugula, Swiss Chard, spinach, wait, that's not a lettuce, or is it?.  Why?  Why are there so many choices?  "Mommy, strawberries.  Are these strawberries?"  "No, Annie, those are blueberries."  Ooh.  Blueberries.  I love blueberries, so I select a blueberry plant and walk away to process lettuces and look for strawberries.  As I walk away, I overhear, "Blueberries need another type to cross-pollinate."  Cross-who?  Edging closer to the couple who exude gardening confidence, I pretend to be looking for that cross-pollinating blueberry plant, so I can soak in any other gardening hints they might drop.  A frustrated, "Mommy!  Where are the strawberries?" interrupts my eavesdropping, so I begin to seek out strawberries, when I overhear a sweet voice from the buggy ask, "Mommy, can we get macaroni seeds, too?" It seems I'm not the only busybody because laughter erupts from my blueberry gardening experts, as well.

After an agonizing twenty minutes of choosing seeds, I mosey over to the soils, stand, and stare, blankly.  "What are we getting now, Mommy?" asks Anna.  "Um, we need soil for the plants." Soil, soil, where is the vegetable garden soil?  I mean seriously, how difficult would it be to put large carrots and tomato plants on  on the correct bag.  An associate clearly senses my ignorance and agony and whispers from behind, "Do you need help?"  "Yes!" I shout with such emotion she stumbles backward.  After explaining my dilemma, she shakes her head with pity and says, "This isn't where you need to be.  Let me show you what I use in my garden."  Of course, she has a garden.  Clearly, I'm the only gardening ignoramus in Birmingham.  I follow her to the gardening soils, which in my defense, are near where they keep the trees.  With soil marked off my list, I head for the containers, where Annie and Connor, in an attempt to be helpful, pull every possible container off the shelf and shove it into the cart, while I desperately try to read the information on the self-watering containers.  I choose the one that has vegetables on the label and clean up the aisle of containers over a chorus of, "This one will be good for the strawberries."  "No, that's too big.  This one, Mommy."  I race to the checkout and head home for phase 2.  Planting.

I lug all of our supplies out of the car and set up a makeshift planting station in the front yard.  Determined to make this an excellent science lesson for our home school, I assign each child a job, which is met with, "But I wanted to do this instead."  "Why does he get to water?  I want to water."  Connor picks up my pruning shears and exclaims, "I want to cut the sticky things off."  What?!  I finally convince each child to pour a package of seeds into a row, cover them, then add water.  I send A and C off to play but to "under no circumstances play in the water" so I can finish planting and watering and clean up.  A few minutes later both walk up to me soaked and whining, "How much longer?  I want a snack." Aaah, this lesson is going exactly as planned.  It's Earth Day, we are one with the soil, a real-life hands in the dirt, open air project, and my two just want to squirt each other with the water hose.

Knowing when I've been defeated, I throw the last remnants of seed packets into the trash and have the kids follow me to where I had just thrown out some old potting soil.  We dig through the soil and discover four worms hard at work tunneling.  I explain how worms help the earth and am surprised when Annie picks one up, names it Rosebud, and takes it over to our container.  "Mommy, you know what else we need to do.  We need to start saving apple cores and banana peels."  "That's right," I respond, wondering how on earth she knows about composting.   She runs off to search for more pets...worms, and my cell phone rings.  Travis, at Lowe's, picking up all the things I forgot to purchase because who knew you needed fertilizer or a watering can, is calling to confirm my list.  Connor grabs the phone, and I hear him tell his dad, proudly, "We planted seeds, Daddy.  We have to wait, but then they'll bloom and we'll have food that we can really eat."  Maybe the lesson is sticking, after all.  The kids' sudden excitement has me believing for a moment that these empty containers may actually soon be filled with real vegetables.  Just maybe......

Defining Grace

Some details of my salvation experience are as tangible as the keys beneath my fingertips; others blend into a haze of childhood experiences fusing seamlessly with other memories to where I'm not clear where the distinction lies.  As I remember, I decided to attend a revival with my grandparents shortly after the birth of my youngest sister.  (After having children of my own, I am growing more aware that the decision was probably made for me by a weary mom.)  I think I was eight years old, had attended church my entire life, even on family vacations, small, intense, churches, so I was accustomed to sermons that would make Jonathan Edwards sweat.  Something about this particular sermon gripped my little heart in fear.  Perhaps it was reminding those of us who were lost of the fiery flames of hell that would engulf our worthless souls if we didn't respond to the altar call immediately.  I even remember pulling my feet up into the pew as if the fire could somehow lick my shiny patent leather shoes from beneath the floor.  Whatever it was, I made my way up the aisle to the altar and asked Christ into my heart.  I was baptized in Big Wills Creek a few weeks later, a story which brings untold amusement to my city students.

For most of my childhood, I saw God as big, powerful, and scary, sitting on the edge of his throne waiting for me to fail.  If I'm completely honest, I came to Him in fear rather than overwhelmed by His mercy and love.  I was vaguely aware God loved me, but it never resonated in a way that left me running into His arms with peals of, "Abba."  I understood God as my judge, but as my daddy, I was too unworthy to receive that kind of love from the Creator of the universe.

Without an adequate understanding of grace, I evolved into a self-righteous good girl driven to guilt anytime I disobeyed one of my own arbitrary rules.  Thou shalt not wear a two-piece swimsuit or immodest clothing.  Check.  Thou shalt not drink.  Check.  Thou shalt not be seen with the "unholy."  Check.  Thou shalt not make anything lower than a 95.  Double-check.  I understood faith without works is dead.  That I grasped.  In fact, it was my mantra, etched firmly into my mind, sending me running in circles earning my salvation with gusto.  But grace....  Crickets.  Grace....  Um, yeah, I was absent that day in Sunday school, but I've memorized the 100th and 23rd Psalm.  Anyone want to hear?    Grace....  Johnson?  Johnson?  Anyone seen Johnson?  Grace....  Wild, unabashed, relentless pursuit, untamed love.  That kind of grace I failed to grasp.  Of all the people on earth, I was the one exception to the grace, not by works, law of love.  That couldn't possibly apply to me.

I'm a doer.....an achiever.  I've run marathons..OK, marathon, but five halves. Graduated valedictorian and summ cum laude.  You want work ethic.  I'm your girl.  My identity is so wrapped up in my achievements sometimes that it's no surprise how the concept of grace can elude me.  There's nothing I can do to earn salvation.  Nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  And for someone like me that's oddly unsettling until I don't measure up, until failure inevitably comes knocking on my door.  Then grace sounds wonderful except that I can't seem to convince myself that God meant me, too.  So, recently, I've been on a quest to truly grasp the grace of God and what it must mean to my relationship with Him, if I'm ever to truly grasp how high, how deep, and how wide His love is for me.  I recently finished reading Brennan Manning's The Ragamuffin Gospel and let's just say it is a book that has ruined me, wrecked me, driven me to my knees weeping tears of release and sweet relief.

It also forces me to realize that I must not be alone.  Browse the recent list of best-selling Christian titles: The Christian Atheist, Gods at War, Grace, The Utter Relief of Holiness, The Hole in Our Holiness:  it seems we're either not doing enough or that we don't understand grace.  We're a nation, or at least we were, a nation of do-it-yourselfers, American dreamers.  Our culture tells us to work harder, longer, and more, and I think that attitude has seeped into our churches, as well.  Manning writes, "the bending of the mind by the powers of this world has twisted the gospel of grace into religious bondage and distorted the image of God into an eternal, small-minded bookkeeper.... Love is stifled, freedom shackled, and self-righteousness fastened.  The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.  Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice....Too many Christians are living in the house of fear and not in the house of love....Many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me.  The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing."  That's me.  Living in a house of fear rather than residing in the love.

I live with a fear of failure, a fear of being exposed for the fraud that I am, hiding the real me because if anyone knew my real fears and inadequacies they couldn't possibly continue to love me.  And it's exhausting.  The real me is messy.  The real me is sometimes lazy.  The real me tends to be selfish.  The real me likes slapstick comedy.  The real me likes the taste of wine.  The real me likes clothes.  The real me made some bad decisions after college and wasn't always the straight and narrow vision of perfection I like to reflect.  The real me doesn't have it all together, but don't let anyone else know because what would they think if they knew most nights dinner comes out of the freezer and when company comes, I shove all the toys into the closet.  But, I'm growing weary, tired of trying to earn my salvation through "works of righteousness that are like filthy rags."  A life without grace is a life that quickly unravels.

The past few weeks the God who's always been there, but I've never trusted enough to allow to truly reveal Himself to me has whispered.  Grace.  My grace is sufficient.  Quit pretending.  Quit trying.  He is saying I accept you....just as you are.  Flaws, warts, bad decisions, and all.  Grace through the blood of Christ has covered all that.  You can't earn My love, sweet girl.  There's nothing on this earth you can do to make me love you less.  I've come to a painful realization; one that is wrecking me.  Until I allow myself to accept grace and to see God as love, not just judge, then I'll never completely surrender all of myself to Him because as hard as it is to admit, it's hard to trust the transforming power of the gospel of grace when I don't see how wildly He loves and pursues me.  How that must hurt Him?  Imagine if my children came to me and asked, "Mommy, do you love me?"  To which I'd respond with a heartfelt, overwhelming, "Of course.  More than the very breath of life itself."  Then they came to me the next day and asked, "Mommy, do you really love me?"  That would be crushing to think my children somehow doubted my love, but that's exactly how I treat the one who bled and died for my transgression.  Oh, how that tears my heart!

I love how Manning puts the reality of God's love through grace.  "What a stunning truth!  Justification by grace through faith is the theologian's learned phrase for what Chesterton once called "the furious love of God."  He is not moody or capricious; He has a single restless stance toward us:  He loves us.  But of course, this is almost too incredible for us to accept....Through no merit of ours, by His mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of His beloved son.  This is the Good News, the gospel of grace."  and later "Grace is the active expression of his love.  The Christian lives by grace as Abba's child, utterly rejecting the God who catches people by surprise in a moment of weakness- the God incapable of smiling at our awkward mistakes, the God who does not accept a seat at our human festivities, the God who says, "You will pay for that," the God incapable of understanding that children will always get dirty and be forgetful, the God always snooping around after sinners.  At the same time, the child of the Father rejects the pastel-colored pasty God who promises never to rain on our parade."    This is the father of the prodigal extending his arms in love not demanding an apology and explanation from his wayward son.  It's also the God who "disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness." Hebrews 12:10. Grace frees us from looking down our noses at others in self-righteous condemnation and demand them to get it all together, to think like us, to ship up or shape out.  It allows us to embrace a hurting world and declare that Jesus died for you, too.

I've always related to the disciple Paul, the spitfire, impulsive disciple who, in his mind, let God down.  I've lived a life of "letting God down."  He spent years with Jesus in the flesh, broke bread with the Savior, had his feet washed by His king, yet when it came time to stand up for Jesus, he didn't just deny him once.  Peter denied him three times.  I can't imagine how that must have haunted Peter in the hours following the crucifixion.  I can be at a neighborhood party, speaking with non-Christian friend when the conversation turns toward faith, yet rather than embracing the opportunity I stutter, "I love your new curtains," hearing the echo of the rooster in the distance then beat myself up for days over a missed opportunity.  Yet, when Jesus encountered Peter, he didn't scold him or berate him.  Instead, our Savior asked this impulsive betrayer to feed his lambs. He gently gave Peter the responsibility of building the church.  And so moved by this grace, Peter became the rock upon which the foundation of the church was laid.  Grace overlooks our flaws and allows us to be part of the team.  "Grace means that God is on our side and thus we are victors regardless of how well we have played the game."  It's time I loosen my perceived halo, admit my powerlessness, and embrace the love of God.

Does grace mean a license to sin?  "Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means! We are those who died to sin.  How can we live in it any longer?" Romans 6:1.  What I believe God is teaching me is that by understanding His love and surrendering to His grace, I then allow the power of his Holy Spirit to transform me.  I cease depending on my own power and rest freely in His.  I will fail, but He will not.  Gripped firmly in the grasp of His love, I am free to be me.  I'm free to embrace my brokenness and lay it at His feet as an offering of all I am then joyously serve in the true freedom of knowing that I am loved.  It is fully engulfed in this truth that I am able to share more freely and honestly who He is and what He has done in my life.  "While Jesus calls us all to a more perfect life, we cannot achieve it on our own.  To be alive is to be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.  It is only through grace that any of us could dare to hope that we could become more like Christ.  The saved sinner with the tilted halo has been converted from mistrust to trust, has arrived at an inner poverty of spirit, and lives as best as she can in rigorous honesty with self, others, and God."  Never have I been happier to tilt my halo, fall at the feet of Jesus, and allow Him to pick me up, cradle me in His arms, and love me.  Under the gospel of grace, I am compelled to live my life in response to Christ's goodness.  Duty is exchanged for sheer delight.  After years of misunderstanding what grace means of trying to earn God's love of living condemned by the guilt of letting Him down, I'm finally ready to run into the arms of my Abba then share that love with the rest of the world!

Plateful of Perspective

When I found myself falling asleep in the middle of a session of  P90X Plyometrics (OK, slight exaggeration), I wondered if it might be a little red flag that something in my body was amiss. I was finding myself exhausted no matter how many hours of sleep I banked each night. Then I remembered one of the side effects from the food portion of 7 had been an unbelievable amount of energy, but the memory was short-lived when I walked through the kitchen and grabbed a handful of Skittles and a mozzarella cheese stick and washed it down with a large glass of sweet tea.  This awesome diet clearly wasn't the culprit of my fatigue or the extra ten pounds I had added in a year.  Don't judge; I had been banking on a really cold winter.

Fed up with being tired and pants that were too tight, I prayed that God would give me insight into my dilemma.  A few days later at church a friend mentioned a book she had read called The Virgin Diet (titled for the author's last name), which peaked my interest, so, thanks to Kindle, I downloaded it that day and read it in a matter of hours.  In a nutshell, the author focuses on eliminating soy, sugar, gluten, dairy, and other culprits that might be causing intolerance and instead, piling your plate with plenty of veggies, lean protein, fruits, nuts, low glycemic-index carbs, and healthy fats.  Very sad that she hadn't recommended pizza, carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and peanut M &M's, I decided to give it a try anyway.  What did I have to lose except my love handles and bra overhang.  After all, I had a partner in crime who was also trying the plan, and I could text her incessantly about my bizarre cravings for Gigi's cupcakes.  

7 had taught me a thing or two about sugar withdrawal, so I was prepared.  I drew the line at giving up caffeine this time and decided to acclimate my taste buds to unsweetened tea.  You are welcome, family.  After a week of eating kale, broccoli, quinoa, whose name I continually butcher, salmon, bell peppers,almonds, you get the point, my energy was back, plus I had lost seven pounds.  Have I mentioned how great my skin suddenly looked?  Seriously, I was bouncing off the walls with energy, but I also found myself seeing mirages of cupcakes in tulips and rumor has it, I may have grabbed a random whiff of the vanilla and cinnamon, as I poured a 1/2 teaspoon of each into my pea-protein powder and blueberry smoothie with coconut milk.  And I may have complained in a really energetic voice about how difficult a life without dessert was, maybe, once, and how awesome cheesy bread or pancakes would taste.

The next day as I was having my quiet time the topic was, I kid you not, Numbers 11: 4-7 because God is amazing and when we listen speaks to us through His word.  Allow me to refresh your memory:  "The rubble who were among them had greedy desires; and....said, "Who will give us meat to eat?  We remember the fish which we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic, but now our appetite is gone.  There is nothing at all to look at except this manna."  Hmm, greedy desires didn't literally leap off the page that morning.  So the Egyptians had been freed from slavery, where they were literally worked each day until the breaking point.  Here, they were free, and God was literally raining manna down from heaven to provide exactly the right amount for their needs, and they were complaining.  It reminds me of the feeling you get when you slave over a perfectly good dinner and your kids whine incessantly about how yucky it is.  I felt the Holy Spirit saying to me, "You asked for the answer to your weight and energy problems, and I provided you a solution.  Instead of enjoying your healthy lifestyle, you are whining about what you're missing:  the very foods that kept you lethargic and bloated."  The very foods that kept me enslaved to exhaustion.  And unlike the Israelites, I could eat all the fish, garlic, and onions I wanted.  

The truth is, like the Israelites, I tend to be stubborn and dig in my heels when confronted with the possibility of stepping outside of my comfort zone.  I'd actually prefer to train for and run a marathon rather than give up foods that I know aren't good for my health.  I'm a stress eater, a celebration eater, a just because it's sunny eater.  I actually run to eat.  7 and my latest eating adventure are teaching me, though, that saying I want to feel better or change and actually performing the work required are not the same.  I can whine about feeling tired all I want, but until I actually implement the changes necessary nothing will change. That's often a tough pill to swallow.

Not only does my body house the Holy Spirit, but God designed our bodies for natural, wholesome foods.  Nowhere in the Bible does it mention processed crackers and genetically modified chickens.  Granted, they didn't have such, but I'm sure that would have been on the list of what not to eat.  Right up there with hot dogs and chicken nuggets.  When Daniel was taken captive by the Babylonians, one of his first orders of business was settling the menu with the palace cooks.  "Daniel determined he would not defile himself with the king's food or with the wine he drank.  So he asked permission from the chief official not to defile himself.  God had granted Daniel favor and compassion from the chief official......so Daniel said....please test your servant for 10 days.  Let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink...and at the end of 10 days they looked better and healthier than all the young men who were eating the king's food."  Daniel 1:8, 9, 11-15.  I imagine the king had prepared a feast of carrot cake, rich meats, and generally, unhealthy foods.  Even thousands of years ago, Daniel knew the benefits of eating a healthy, pure diet.  The benefits of eating like he knew he should outweighed (no pun intended) any short-lived pleasure of unhealthy foods.

So while I still have a mean craving for icing and I'm not swearing off sugar for life, I am definitely learning that I can't just experiment with eating more veggies every now and then.  If I want to have more energy and a healthier family, I must kick many foods I love out of the cart and rely on a diet of healthy, wholesome, unprocessed foods.  No matter how I try to hide under a mound of M & M's, this truth that's been a foundation since the days of Adam and Eve isn't going anywhere.  So when you see me munching on broccoli and berries and you happen to be eating real ice cream, I'd ask you finish your cone before you come say hello.....  All kidding aside, I feel so amazing after three weeks of a diet overhaul that I can't imagine going back to feeling like a sloth slogging through my days.  So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go stare at the brown sugar and chocolate chips while I eat a handful of almonds and bell peppers.