The sweet spot

The view out the kitchen window reveals that the garden seems to have blown itself up...like a self inflating balloon...like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. And this, seemingly over night. Everything is fat and green with spots of flowers of pink, white, red-orange, yellow, etc.  I am at that sweet spot of garden life, where I can tread the paths and think in peace "This needs a little weeding...this needs a little pruning...time to pull these out...time to put something different in here," as opposed to "Aaaaaaaaargh!! I'm buried in weeds!" The Japanese beetles have dwindled (I did kill a BUNCH,) and seeds planted seem to be responding to the warmth and water. 

Don't think I haven't thought how this can apply to the rest of life(you weren't thinking that, were you?). I'm struggling emotionally right now, and I can't understand why, when all seems to be going well. I should be in the sweet spot of life, when things just need small adjustments--the major tasks are behind me and I've walked a road with sufficient obstacles and traumas. And of course, as in the garden, so in life, the weeds are waiting, waiting, to sprout forth and overwhelm me again. So why so downcast, oh my soul?

​I only have one theory, and it could be so so wrong. But maybe the little adjustments are the hardest. Maybe having the time to consider the details also brings the time to review and condemn, to examine the failures and have time for disappointment. 

I like to think this is only because we strive for perfection--a garden without weeds, bursting forth with aesthetic and nutritional value, so that the necessary adjustments now seem like an affront to our efforts. It also underscores the longing we all have, to live in the beauty, to be enfolded in the glory of the Creator's arms.  We stretch out on our tippy-toes to attain to it here--our hearts and our souls cry out to live in that place--but we are still being formed for it:  a long, often arduous process.  So we can only look forward, and be grateful for the productivity of the garden as it is, and for the promise of future weeds with which to contend. 

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