How does your garden grow?

I've had this nursery rhyme in my head:
    Mary, Mary quite contrary
    How does your garden grow?

I've been thinking a lot about my own garden.

I often imagine that my heart is a garden where Christ and I can walk and talk.  In the garden of my heart I learn many things about myself and about the Lover of My Soul.  As the nursery rhyme played in my head the other day I decided to think about the garden of my heart and the things that are growing there.

My heart has changed so much over the past ten years.  Ten years ago I was guarded and deeply wounded.  I lived from my wounds and had plants with deep roots of anger choking out some of the beauty and fragrance.

Over the past six years my heart has grown.  In Missouri I learned to love in ways I had never loved before: taking hundreds of people into my heart, learning to love a husband, discovering the love of my child.  The more you love, the bigger your heart grows and the greater it's capacity for loving - particularly unconditional loving which is what each of us so desperately needs.

I was thinking of all the ways I have changed.  All the skills I have developed.  All the growth.

And then I realized...

Something grows in my garden that is greater than all these things... even greater than me.

Something grows that that needs my life and attention, wisdom and experience, my love and tenderness.

My children.

Life's seasons are as unpredictable as the weather in Missouri.  We never know what to expect.  But, as we live through these seasons pursuing Christ, He reveals to us deeper truths about our lives.  The deep truth he is showing me is that the little girl playing on the living room floor, that I just danced with, who loves climbing and sitting on Mommy's lap, who speaks a language that only she understands, this little girl is one of the greatest treasures of my heart.  She is one of the best gifts I could give to the world.

Now it is my job to cultivate, to prune, to lead, to guide, to help her grow and grow and grow.

I want my children to be powerful for the Kingdom of God.  I want them to be brave, smart, wise, creative, adventurous.  I want them to be dangerous to Evil and bringers of light, hope, and goodness.

I want my children to be greater than I.

A garden doesn't grow if you don't spend time and energy cultivating the plants.  So, this season is about cultivating my plants and making my children the priority of my life.

How does your garden grow?
With a beautiful babe,
And one on the way,
And more beauty than I could now know.