A week or so ago, I asked Aidan if he’d like a job. Because it involved a power tool, he said yes.
There are two shrubs that grow right next to each other by our back gate. One I’ve been trying to get rid of since we moved in. The other I love, with its willowy branches, but it grows at a phenomenal rate. This year, when everything woke from winter dormancy, both shrubs—the one I love and the one I wish was gone —quickly outgrew what I had hoped would be their boundaries, making the back entrance to our home more unkempt, overgrown fortress and less well-mannered, welcoming home.
I gave Aidan the electric hedge trimmer and told him I wanted one shrub gone and the other cut back. I’m not sure how much time passed before Aidan came into the house to report that the one I wanted gone was gone. Mostly. I stood at the backdoor and looked out. Branches littered the yard. It was a mess, but I was grateful for progress.
A day or two later, I was so angry (never mind what made me so angry) that there was nothing for me to do but take the manual lopper and go after the other shrub with the fuel from that I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-this rage.
The shrub had spread its branches through the fence, reaching out to the road behind our house. Many of the lopped off branches landed in the yard, but a fair amount fell along the outside edge of our chain link fence. Eventually, I picked up all the branches in the yard. I never did, though, get around to cleaning up the mess outside the fence.
Yesterday morning, I walked to my car, parked on the road that runs along the south side of our home. As Keaton and I approached, we saw big piles of something(?) tucked under my car and damming up against the driver’s side tires. It was all those lightweight willowy branches that had fallen outside the fence. During the heavy rain, a river of fast-flowing water carried those branches away from the house. Had my car not been parked there, I imagine they would have been removed from our property altogether. I picked up the piles of soggy branches and threw them onto the yard to clear the street.
Today, I again walked to my car, still parked on the street. The river of rain was no longer flowing, so no surprises met Logan and me as we approached. I drove Logan to his destination, returned home, parked the car, and walked to the back door. So many thoughts were swirling in my head, the anger displaced (for the most part) by deep sadness.
A brilliant pop of yellow that I had managed not to notice on my walk to the car, rose and made itself known to me. I knelt down to look closer.
Last year, I planted one single miniature pumpkin plant right inside the back fence. It grew like it had nothing else to do. Every other day, I was out there lifting up vines and encouraging them to trellis along the fence instead of taking over my newly planted perennials.
The pumpkin plant was glorious in its unruliness, its unwillingness to be confined, its ability to grow—and, in its growth, to offer not only the fruits of its labor but also genuine awe and delight to this former farm girl. I still can’t get over the miracle that is planting a seed and watching it emerge from the womb of rich, black Iowa soil.
That brilliant pop of yellow this morning was the bloom of a miniature pumpkin plant, growing right up out of the mess of washed up gravel and dead leaves that accumulates along our fence—debris too heavy to be carried away completely by the rain. I had not planted it. I had not nurtured it. I had not even noticed it was there. It arose overnight, I swear, like a long-ago burning bush—a miracle and a messenger.
This is holy ground—the anger, the sadness, the digging in, the letting go, the pruning back, the cutting down, the miracle of growth out of what appeared to be only an untended mess.
This is holy ground.
God is speaking.