seeds and growth

Seeds.  Such tiny things.  So seemingly insignificant yet they are the perfect encapsulation for life and promise.

But new growth takes time.  Once these little globes of potential are tucked beneath the soil, you can't do anything but watch, weed and surrender to the process - even when it's painfully slow.  You can't rush it.  You can't control it.   

I learned it again this spring as a huge patch of our lawn struggled to come back to life.  While tender shoots of green were popping up elsewhere, this one section remained stubbornly brown and dry.  (The fact that it was buried beneath a skating rink from November to March could have had something to do with it.)  

So we added seed and loam.  Then we watered and waited.  Nothing much seemed to change so we did it all again in mid July. 

More loam...more seed...more water...more waiting....and still pretty patchy.

There are places in my soul that feel this way sometimes.  

Plenty of seed gets planted and watered, yet I am bare and showing in too many places....nowhere near the lush, green lawn I'd imagined.  It seems to be taking forever to become the person I want to be.

As a result, I'm constantly learning what it means to wait and to trust this process of death cycling into life.  The seed that holds so much promise and potential is only produced once a plant begins to die.  I forget that sometimes --that the dying process is always intimately connected to the beginnings of new life.  Too often, I'm looking for a short cut.  I want instant results --- and by the way, I don't want anything to have to die first!!   

It's September and the grass is almost completely filled in now.  Woooo Hooo!!  Just in time to be covered with an ice rink again this winter.

And maybe, just maybe......after a little dying, a little planting, a little watering, and a lot of waiting, some of my patchy places have filled in a little too.

Thank you to the One who died to make me fully alive.


Words and images © copyright Melody Armstrong 2013