Count It All Joy: Harvesting in Lichinga

I've always loved the idea of having my own garden so that I could harvest my own veggies! Maybe my Grandmother put that idea into my head since she used to grow her own veggies when I was a child. About 2 years ago, I started a vegetable garden. As I started it, I really felt that the Lord was going to speak to me as my garden grew. I felt that He was going to use my garden to pour revelation into my life about Himself, my walk with Him, my family life, etc. I prepared the ground by digging up the soil and composting, then planted my seeds. I was so excited when my lettuce, butternut squash, broccoli, eggplant and melon seedlings began to emerge in the days and weeks later! I diligently tended to that garden as I watched everything grow. I felt that God would surely begin teaching me lessons in fruitfulness, planting seeds in my heart as I had in the ground. As my plants grew, I noticed that my lively squash plants suddenly seemed to start deteriorating. My melon vines weren't doing very well, either. But I continued to water, weed, and nurture my little plants.

During that time in 2011, we decided that my husband would fly to the U.S. to celebrate his dad's 60th birthday. As we prepared for him to go, we realized that I was pregnant with my 4th child. Tyren went off to America and I soon began to feel tired, weak and nauseated. My already struggling garden didn't get all of the attention it needed in that time, though I continued to put care into it. By the time Tyren returned a couple of weeks later, the weeds had overtaken much of the garden, my lettuce had bolted, and most of the plants had died! Where was the fruit of my labor? What lessons of revelation was God going to teach me from a failed garden? I was so disappointed! I stopped trying to see or hear anything that God might have wanted me to learn from my gardening experience because I felt that there was not much to learn from a failed garden with no harvest. I gave up gardening.

Now it’s 2013, 2 years later, and I've planted another garden. It is very fruitful! We have kale, mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, snow pea plants, broccoli, mesclun lettuce, local lettuce, and herbs all growing beautifully. The local lettuce was grown from the seeds I saved 2 years ago when all of my lettuce plants bolted quickly and went to seed. I have since learned that I planted the lettuce in the wrong season before! Now that I know the right time to plant it, we have beautiful and bountiful lettuce to eat in its season. Some time last year I began to revisit the lessons that I felt I was supposed to learn from my gardening attempt 2 years ago and I realized that God had taught me quite a bit during that time. In the next 1 or 2 blog posts I will share some of the lessons God has taught me through my gardening experiences in Lichinga.