It Was My Mother's Garden

Her handwriting is still on the labels.

That is the detail, is it not. Not the beds and not the roses. The labels, in her hand, pushed into the soil where she put them, some of them faded to almost nothing and one or two still perfectly readable.

And you have been out there maybe six times in fourteen months and you have not touched a thing.

Let me lay out the position you are in, because I think naming it will help, and I do not think anybody has named it for you.

If you work in it, you change it. You pull something she planted. You move something she placed. And every one of those acts feels like taking a small piece of her away, and the pieces are finite and there are no more coming.

If you leave it, it goes. Which is also losing her, only slower and with the added weight that it happened while you watched.

Both roads end in the same place and you have been standing at the junction for over a year.

You are not betraying her either way, and a garden left as it was has never once been the same thing as keeping somebody.

I want to say one more thing before we go on, because I think it is the part that has you stuck rather than sad.

You are not grieving the garden. You are grieving her, and the garden has become the place where the grief has to be transacted, and every decision out there has been given a weight that no decision about a plant can actually carry.

Beauty for ashes

There is a line in Isaiah that is about exchange, and the mechanism in it is the part that matters here.

To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (Isaiah 61:3, King James Version)

Beauty for ashes.

Now, notice that this is a trade and not a repair. The ashes are not restored. Nobody puts the burnt thing back together. Something different is given in place of it, and the giving is the whole of the mercy.

You are inside a promise that hands over something new rather than mending something old, and Scripture has never once offered to put a burnt thing back the way it was. Isaiah 61:3 gives beauty for ashes rather than turning ashes back into what they were, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an exchange land as kindness rather than as loss.

That matters out there, because what you have been trying to do is preserve.

You have been holding the beds exactly as she left them, which is not a trade at all. It is an attempt to stop the clock. And it cannot work, and part of you knows it cannot work, and that is why going out there is heavy rather than sweet.

You have been asked for an exchange and have been attempting a preservation, and holding a thing still has never once been what that verse offered anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives something in place of what is gone, and the written word describes a handing over rather than a restoration.

And look who the verse is addressed to. Them that mourn in Zion.

Not them that have finished mourning. Not them who have moved on properly. The exchange is offered to people while they are still in it, which means you do not have to be further along than you are to be handed anything.

You are being offered something in the middle of it rather than at the end, and mourning has never once been a state a person had to leave before God would hand them anything. The Spirit of God is the one who deals with people while they are still mourning, and the word names them that mourn as the ones receiving.

Neither road is a betrayal

Let me deal with the junction directly, because I think both of your options have been mislabeled.

Working in it is not erasing her. That is the fear and it is not true.

She planted those things to be gardened. That is what a garden is. She pruned and moved and pulled things out herself, constantly, for years, and never once thought she was destroying anything. A garden is a thing that is worked, and working it is the opposite of disrespecting the person who made it.

You are not able to erase her by pulling a weed, and a garden being tended has never once been a garden being undone. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person safe in a place they are no longer standing, and Isaiah 61:3 is about being handed something new without the old being dishonored.

And the other road is not devotion either.

Leaving it exactly as it is feels like loyalty, but it is closer to a museum, and she did not leave you a museum. She left you a garden, which is a thing that requires a person in it.

I am not going to tell you which to do this year or how much of it. But I want the false labels off both options, because you have been choosing between betrayal and betrayal and no wonder you have been out there six times in fourteen months.

You were never choosing between two ways of failing her, and a decision about a bed has never once been able to carry a verdict about a daughter. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the weight off a decision that was never that heavy, and the written word offers an exchange rather than a test.

One corner, one thing of yours

So here is the assignment, and the shape of it is the point.

Plant one thing of your own choosing in one corner of it.

Not something she would have picked. Something you like. Something that would not have been in there if she had gone on living, chosen by you, for your own reasons.

You are permitted to put something of yours into her ground, and one thing chosen by a daughter has never once been an intrusion into what her mother made. Isaiah 61:3 gives something in place of what was lost, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there with a woman kneeling in a corner of her mother's beds.

Here is why one corner and why something of yours.

Because the whole problem is that the garden currently has only one author, and she is gone, and so every act out there is either preservation or damage. There is no third category available.

Put one thing of yours in it, and there is a second author, and now it is a garden two people made, which is a completely different object and one you are allowed to keep working on.

You are adding a second hand to a thing that has only had one, and a garden with two authors has never once been a garden that lost the first. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes room for a person without displacing anybody, and the word gives beauty for ashes rather than asking anybody to choose between them.

And leave the labels. All of them. They are not in the way and there is no reason to make a decision about them this year.