“Preparing the Soil”

My mom used to have a cute little wall hanging in her house that said, “I’m closer to God in my garden than anywhere else on earth.” (If you started to make a theological argument in your head when you read that, you need to take a deep breath before reading further.)

I (dramatic pause) have a garden. My dad killed a patch of grass in our back yard, and last Saturday my wonderful husband tilled it up. I’ve had many blissful hours since then in the patch of dirt that was left behind.

And you know how it is hanging out with Jesus: everything becomes an object lesson. So here we go.

Well, wait. Before we begin allow me to explain some Christian jargon to any non-Christians who may be reading. Jesus liked to compare the Word of God (the written one and the words Jesus spoke day after day) to a seed. Because He’s good with analogies, He, then, commonly referred to our hearts as the soil said seed was planted in to bring forth gorgeous plants and delicious foods (i.e. peace, love, joy, kindness, patience, etc.). K? So there’s an unspoken moral to this silliness.

Here we go. What I learned about myself while starting a garden:

1. It’s much harder to start a new garden than to start a new season in the garden that my mom has been cultivating for years. A lot harder, and for obvious reasons.

2. It’s impossible to till up live grass. It’s simply too resilient. Sometimes things are perfectly normal and perfectly fine need to die so you can get to good soil.

3. It’s still hard to till up dead grass. God bless my wonderful husband. He tilled and raked and tilled and raked and then I think tilled a third time. Just getting to fresh soil, where a seed can be safely planted, is half the battle.

And it needs to be done way ahead of time. You can’t chose the day you want to plant and go out that day to kill the grass. The grass took a week to die and tilling it up took most of the morning. If the soil hadn’t been prepared ahead of time, the seed wouldn’t grow.

4. Doing your best means you will get dirty. Despite all the labor that had already gone into it, I spent a day and a half on my knees, digging up the dirt with my hands and a small garden spade. The garden might have grown alright if I hadn’t, but I really got down to the good dirt.


5. Purity is key/anything can be a weed. If I say “weed” you think – well, alright, some of you think of drugs but past that – of dandelions and thistles. In a cultivated garden, though, anything besides what is planted is a weed. The grass that was normal – even necessary – a few weeks ago is now a weed, so all of it has to come out lest it spread … like a weed.

6. You have to tend the whole thing. My strategy was to dig up a two-foot wide strip and then plant something, and then dig up the next two feet and plant something. Each thin row of seed needs to be a foot to a foot-and-a-half apart.

After a couple rows the temptation was to leave the soil between the rows and just dig up and purify the thin strip where I was going to plant. I thought about it for a minute and then realized that if I don’t take care of the soil between the rows, whatever is still rooted there will grow up and I’ll have to deal with it later. Later, however, it will have recovered from three tillings and be more rooted and I’ll have to be more careful not to kill the veggies growing next to it.

7. Know your enemies and show no mercy. Earthworms are not your enemies. Quite the contrary. Earthworms aerate the soil and plants like aerated soil. Earthworms are you friends. Beetle larvae, however, are not your friends. They will eventually become beetles and likely eat your veggies. The earthworms I was careful to spare. The beetle larvae I threw into the street.

There you go. I’m sure there will be more lessons as things start to grow and harvesting kicks in. I know, I know, you’re on the edge of your seat but you’ll just have to wait.

It’s been almost a week and the wake left by whatever tore through our neighborhood last Thursday morning is still obvious.

Across the street, our neighbors’ fence is still in shambles. A dozen yard waste bags stand at attention along the curb, and the stump near the street is still fresh.

At the other end of the block, someone’s tree remains obviously amputated and ashamed next to the porch it accidentally destroyed. It’s future is uncertain. Part of the roof is still missing, and logs line the street for the width of the block.

Windshields have been replaced. Gutters are being repaired, and every day when I come home I stare up at the dead branch hanging precariously at the very top of our injured tree. I’d rather it fall when no one is around than have to pay someone to pull it down.

My parents live in McHenry – a good 30 minutes north – and we laughed about their non-response to the tornado siren that went off Thursday morning. They live blocks away from the fire department, so sirens are not uncommon.

Coworkers, friends, church family have all shared stories of bunkering down in basements and pantries at the sound of the alarms in Crystal Lake, Lake in the Hills, Dundee, and Cary. No one has destruction stories to rival ours, but we’re also the only ones who never heard a siren.

I’ve had prophetic words spoken over/at me for years. You hang out with people who believe the New Testament and it happens. One has stuck with me more than the others for a little over two years now, and it had to do with being a siren – the air raid kind, not the nude mermaid kind. If there was one that I could say with all certainty was the word of the Lord it was that one.

And to an extent it’s true of all Christians. Our job is to prepare the way. We’re an army of John the Baptists. We’re the voices in the wilderness that, when everything looks lost, speak truth.

Our neighborhood was the hardest hit, and we were the only ones who did not hear a siren. I was talking to Holy Spirit about the irony of it and he stopped me in my tracks:

“Be ready.”

Tornado sirens are tested on the first Tuesday of every month at 10 AM. We’re all used to it. We hardly flinch when they go off during staff meetings or classes. The first Tuesday of the month at 10 AM, however, is not the purpose of the siren.

The purpose of the siren is to warn people of the coming danger. Said siren could nail every first Tuesday of the month at 10 AM with stunning accuracy, and still ultimately fail, rendering itself useless, if it doesn’t go off when danger is imminent.

Be ready.

In Matthew 24, Jesus is talking to His disciples. Verse three even says they came to Him privately. He wasn’t talking to the church leaders. He wasn’t talking to the masses. He was talking to the twelve, and in verse 42 He says, “Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.”

Matthew 24:44//Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.