I have an iron problem with my soil. It’s super annoying.
The leaves of my plants take on a neon-green, veiny quality that looks out of place.
The only solution is to amend my soil.
When I started gardening, I knew none of this, thankfully, or I think I would have abandoned the idea entirely. But I chose to buckle down, and now, years later, I can actually decipher what the three numbers on a bag of fertilizer mean: “10-10-10” or “8-3-5” now makes sense to me.
I have also learned what time of year to sow, what time of year to harvest, and what time of year to turn on my irrigation and watch my garden from the window, hoping for its survival through the hottest months. (I’m looking at you, August.)
The learning curve feels steep, but thankfully, I didn’t have to learn everything all at once to grow a petunia. In the beginning, I actually started container gardening in Alaska, which is completely different than Texas. I wouldn’t even call it gardening. I honestly just put a few seasonal flowers in planters on my porch after Mother’s Day.
When I moved to Texas, I inherited a sweet little salsa garden in a wooden raised bed with peppers still growing.
I started slow and built off what I inherited through the years, learning and dreaming into what I would someday like it to be.
The Lord’s plan is like that sometimes.
I think that’s why God tends to illuminate our next step instead of the entire journey. If He had shown me a picture of my garden now, nine years ago, and said, “I want you to turn your yard into this,” I would have told Him that I absolutely couldn’t do it. That I wasn’t capable and that He had the wrong girl. He had a girl who knew how to grow petunias from the garden center, not even from seed.
But He didn’t tell me that. He knew what I was capable of. He knew what He had put in me, but I didn’t.
So He gave me an established salsa garden and inspired me to learn: little by little, season after season. Through failure, drought, and red ant attacks, until I had perfected my very own, absolutely delicious, I might say, homemade tomato sauce recipe. (I never did accomplish amazing salsa, so we redirected to tomato sauce.)
I think that sometimes we mistake His little-by-little approach as one of cruelty or even ambivalence, when in reality He knows how He made us, and He knows how we learn, how we grow, and what groundwork needs to be laid before He can release to us His full plan.
So today, as you tend to whatever it is that He has given you, do it with the knowledge that He is intentional and that He is the one doing the growing. He is the one who is increasing your capacity season after season and year after year.
With this in mind, just take a minute to reflect on an area in your life in which you feel as if you have been waiting for fulfillment or feel like you have been screaming at a closed sky.
Do you know what that area is?
If not, ask Him to tell you.
Now take a deep breath and look down at your feet.
What was the very last step you were supposed to take?
Have you done it?
Have you asked Him for the next?
Do this and move forward with Him, little by little, day by day. Choose to value the fact that as you surrender to Him, He is faithful to move you forward.
He is faithful to accomplish what He began in you. Faithful to create in you and around you that which at one time seemed impossible.
For years, I thought I was learning to grow salsa ingredients. Instead, I ended up learning to make tomato sauce.
Sometimes God grows us toward something completely different than what we thought we were building.
So keep taking the next step. Trust Him with today’s assignment. He is faithful to finish what He starts, even when the finished garden looks nothing like what you imagined.
With love and hope,
Lacey Steel
