The Gardener

Maybe my garden isn’t barren.

Maybe it’s bleeding.

I knelt there again today. In the soil I’ve worked so hard to till.

The same place I cried over seed packets and made promises to grow something worth tending.

Something worth showing.

Something… worth being proud of.

And I saw it,

A bloom.

Fragile. Pale. Soft pink on the edge of becoming something beautiful.

And before I could even whisper thank You,

I cut it.

Quick.

Almost instinctively.

Held it up to the world like a badge.

“See? I am a gardener. I really am capable of life and growth.”

But it wilted in my hand before anyone noticed.

And I wept.

I keep wondering why nothing’s flourishing.

Why nothing stays.

Why I have moments of breakthrough and then a slow fade back into barren silence.

And today, I think I finally heard the whisper of heaven interrupt my ache:

“You keep cutting the bloom to prove you belong in the garden.”

I have confused validation with fruit.

Proof with presence.

Performance with partnership.

I thought the blooms were the reward for my pain.

But they were invitations to rest in the process.

To pause.

To worship.

To simply be a co-laborer with God in the garden.

But I kept severing what was sacred,

Offering petals to people who never asked for them

Just so I wouldn’t feel like an imposter in my own soil.

Maybe I was never meant to harvest the beauty as fast as it appeared.

Maybe I was supposed to let it stay.

Let it scent the air.

Let it catch heaven’s dew in the early morning quiet.

Let it exist without needing to be cut, held, or shown.

I’m grieving the garden I keep destroying

Because I thought I had something to prove.

But today, I am asking the Master Gardener to teach me how to keep what He grows.

To leave what’s blooming where it belongs.

To resist the urge to explain myself through fruit

And simply abide in the Vine.

I will tend with reverence.

Water with worship.

Wait without reaching too quickly.

Because maybe the most sacred kind of gardener

Is the one who doesn’t need to prove they can grow things, They just love the garden enough to let it live.