Who’s Watering Your Garden?

I recently planted a garden as part of my grief recovery and self-care. It has been a one of the most rejuvenating practices for my mind, body, and spirit. Gardening involves a process of nurturing and cultivating the ground in my yard to grow flowers and plants.

Often, we focus on helping and caring for others. Yet, we ignore the rocks, weeds, stones, thorns, thistles, and insects that come to eat up the fruit of our lives. While we are giving, caring, and attending to everyone else’s garden our own gardens dry up, wither, and die.

The image of a well-watered garden in Isaiah 58:11 paints the picture of a people who are continually sustained by their God, and a people who are fruitful and productive:

Isaiah 58:11

“And the Lord will continually guide you,

And satisfy your desire in scorched places,

And give strength to your bones;

And you will be like a watered garden,

And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail. 

God desires our lives to be like a well-watered garden. Yet, we all go through dry seasons and spiritual droughts. We experience stagnant and unproductive seasons.

Therefore, we must water the garden of our lives to avoid becoming dry, parched, and unfruitful.

Think about your life as a garden and answer these questions honestly:

1.     Are you maintaining the soil of your life with good health, wellness, self-care practices, nutrition, and rest?

2.     Is your life diverse with different ways of living and being, relationships, hobbies and activities that produce a holistic lifestyle?

3.     How are you using your resources of time, energy, money, education, career, and opportunities?

4.     Are you taking harmful foods, drinks, drugs, ideologies, negative mindsets, and thinking?

5.     What is health level of your environment? Are you living and working in toxic environments? What practices are you engaged in regularly that maintain your mental, physical, financial, relational, and spiritual health?

Water is a fertilizer. It contains nutrients that increase freshness, fertility, and the beauty of gardens. Much like a natural garden, a well-watered garden represents the fruitfulness that will spring from our lives when we prioritize our own garden.

Water increases the capacity of a garden to produce vegetation and life. When the garden of our lives is consistently watered, our capacity for productivity, satisfaction of life, joy and passion in our work is increased.

The question remains, who’s watering your garden?

Dr. Toni