This past year of my life has been one of tremendous wrestling with God. Many times, I’ve also looked up from this wrestling match to find that it wasn’t God I was wrestling with, but the devil, who had maneuvered his way into my suffering and twisted it, causing me to fight against the wrong things.
I was fighting one such battle when the first hard freeze hit the garden last week. Nothing says “the season is over” quite like finding a frost-encrusted honey bee who entered into his eternal rest atop a frozen zinnia. It’s time to surrender to the season.
But what does that surrender look like? This is the battle of my mind and heart, to accept the season I am in and see God here in every moment. If I see His hand in the growth, the pruning, and the harvesting, I must also acknowledge His holy work in the cold, dark mornings, the death, the dormancy.
I must remember that God is love, and His will and action are always oriented toward drawing me deeper into His love. Sometimes, like a petulant child, I only desire the love that is pleasing to my senses.
But as I quiet myself before God each morning and look at the Crucifix, I see that the greatest Love looked nothing like a garden in full bloom. Ultimate Love is sacrifice—arms outstretched, willingly accepting death in order for eternal life to be born.
If I want to be united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, I must welcome this perfect Love to work within me. One trial, one suffering, one dark morning at a time. Yes, Jesus. I love You. Make my heart like unto Thine.
As I came back into the house after surveying the damage of that first freeze, I noticed the bunches of dried flowers hanging upside down in my windows. Throughout the season I clipped dozens of strawflowers and celosia, gomphrena and statice. And now, their beauty preserved, I can keep them as reminders through the winter of God’s beauty and consolation. The growth, the blessing, the blooms, the fruit.
And this is how I can remain attentive to the One with Whom I wrestle—I must keep my heart tuned in to His beauty and love while He does the interior work in the darkness. I must meditate on His goodness and not allow my mind to be occupied with the frost and the matter of purification itself.
If God is purifying me of my selfishness, the enemy wants me to be consumed with the sheer magnitude of it. The enemy wants my attention frozen in my sin—even the horror of it—instead of keeping my eyes on God while His purifying fire moves through my soul.
So, I welcome the winter. The garden is being torn down, and God is with me. Nights are longer and darker—God still be praised! The flowers are done blooming for the season, and yet God’s magnificent gifts of grace are preserved in my heart and my memory. He did His work in a season of flourishing, and now it is time to submit to a season of rest and purification. This is nothing to lament—this is an invitation to surrender to Love.
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him;
my help and my God.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love;
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
Psalm 42:5,8
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Order Whitney’s new book, Garden of the Soul: Opening Your Heart to the God Who Heals, with a foreword by Stephanie Burke, here.
This post first appeared on Notes from the Garden and the Soul and is reprinted here with permission.
