I Thought I Was Over That!

"I thought I was over that."  Have you ever found yourself saying that before? I found myself saying it after a recent conversation I had with some new friends where I suddenly realized I was lying to myself and was not over something that I kept trying telling I was.  It was blatantly obvious too as I sat there and blabbed away at how I had been so disrespected and it was just too competitive and hard to find someone willing to pay me to do what I do.  I resented the success of others, of those who didn't give me notice...so who did I think I was kidding?  Sadly the only fool in the room was me. 

In my statements it was clear I was still snarling at others in my past as I sat there licking old wounds.  That is exactly the picture I got of how I sounded as I heard myself share how I gave up a dream of a career path after it became such a frustration with door after door closing, of others who were "someone" getting all the business and God was not blessing anything I did along that path.  I cringe to even write about how I felt, it hurts to clean this wound and get all the gunk out so it can heal. 

I struggled with things in part because I am obviously gifted in many aspects of that career path and have a natural affinity for the subject of it.  I was not at all prepared for God's plans to not marry with my vision of where I was going.  Not prepared for Him to stop me cold in my tracks with disablitity that has brought huge refining in my life.  God sees something deeper, more profound in me that He wants to bring out and use.  My holding on to the past and licking my wounds does me no good towards being able to see what God wants me to do either.  Honestly I didn't think I was terribly stubborn about this but evidently I was more than I though and my holding on to this junk makes that pretty clear I've been resistant to letting go of my dream, something He wants to fully surrender to His will.

What I was sharing about in that conversation last night was how I had applied for a dream job that looked like a total "God thing" but ended in devastation and disillusionment.  This job opening looked like they had taken every area I had worked and volunteered in and designed the job specifically for me, right down to it the applicant not needing a college degree.  It would have paid more than I have ever made, had benefits better than anything I have ever had and sorely needed and the no college degree item was the jerk of the pole that set the hook in my mouth and led me to believe it was from God.  Presumption is such a trap that way. I jumped in with both feet on this one and as it turned out I was not called in for an interview, was not even thanked for applying but only given a short letter stating the job was filled.  WHAT!?  Not even a nod to my skills and a thank you?  Why how dare they!  Self righteously I stated I would never work for someone who treated applicants who took the time to properly apply as I did.  Why of all the nerve!  I mean how could they be so cold when I had even sought counsel on how to write that resume and had help editing it until it was clear I was more than qualified.  But it wasn't them that closed the door, it was God. 

I had honestly wished I hadn't say a word to anyone after it all came down as everyone was as shocked as I was and only fueled the first of disappointment and frustration over the whole ordeal. And since then I have found myself battling with resentments and being more jaded than ever about ever being able succeed in that industry so I tossed in the towel and have sat pouting about it ever since...though on the outside it isn't always evident.  God has seen it though and said "That's enough of that! It's time for a little attitude adjustment my dear girl".  This jaded, pouting, resentful attitude did not speak well of my trust of God and my so called desire to follow Him and He was done with it all.  So was I really but as happens so often, change sometimes takes time and a nudge from God before it happens.  Thankfully, God doesn't want to leave me here but wants better for me, in spirit and in my life. 

After the conversation and God's little tap on my shoulder, I began to think about all I was feeling and why.  Why am I struggling so?  Why, if I know that God has something better, am I even holding court with any resentment towards anyone or feeling sorry for myself?  Having such a cold response to that application was basically getting no acknowledgement for something I had given my life to as a career I was quite passionate about and had placed a lot of hope in, so didn't I have the right to feel that way?  You might think so but I don't.  Those feelings goes back to that old gnarly root of feeling the need for validation from man which ruled my entire life for decades.  I thought I had gotten over that too back when I realized the work of Christ on the cross, that shed blood, had removed all my guilt and His love filled me up so much I wasn't striving for validation any longer.  Well, evidently there was some root left that God made clear to me was trying to again take root and needed ousting.  But I am not discouraged.

These old roots of resentments tug at my heart, skew my perspective and misguide the trajectory of my life as I try to move forward in God's will.  My aim will be a bit off if I don't cut them away and let them fall to the side and will hinder me when I move to take steps forward into what God has for me.  They will color how I see situations and affect my relationships for the rest of my life and I don't that!  I want to see things the way God wants me to, have His truth do the affecting of those relationships and follow freely His lead...step by solid step in faith and trust.

God relishes my trust but I am not trusting if I am still feeling resentment, self pitty and putting the blame on others for something He actually did.  He was the one who kept closing the doors, even withdrew His blessings in related non-work applications of this doing all He could to get me to stop and change course.  Yup...it wasn't those evil HR people, it was God trying to get me to stay on His path for my life.  And those old resentments needed to go for they kept me lashed to that past experience and on the path of my own will as I refused to surrender them to the Lord.

It is not so easy to let go of that future I had planned out as I thought it was; it's even a little heartbreaking.  It's hard to not put all this up into God's face, all the hours and energy invested and the fact that  I have a natural gifting for it.  Hard not to say why did you allow me to like this so much that my heart is sick from hope deferred.  Then I hear God ask "Where is your hope really?" and I am undone again.  God said "No, I have something better."  Even I understand this truth it's still at times hard to not fall into rehearsing that hurt and talk about that frustration I feel.  But the Lord understands and is patient.

When people ask me what I do that's when it is hardest because I want so badly to be doing something but what I was planning on and had worked so hard for was denied me and now I am doing nothing.  Because of the change of my life's trajectory God brought forth I keep saying I am having to reinvent myself but that is really not true at all.  What I am trying to do is figure out how to follow God's path for my life which means finding what His will is for me in what I do with my gifts and talents.  I keep tripping myself up with things I need to let go of and feel like I can't get my legs under me and feeling frustrated for the lack of forward motion in my life.  This is what the reinvention for this Christ follower is really all about.  Reinvention is about restoring order in my spiritual life first and about creating that attitude within me that will not listen to every fickle whim of my heart and busy creative mind that at present has no real focus when it comes to career, at least non that is viable yet..  It's about creating that heart within me that will not run like the wind into what "seems" right and instead sit quietly waiting for Him to say go do this.  Creating that heart of peace and restedness that comes from complete and utter trust in God's will and purpose for my life.  O Lord, have mercy and help me get this one right.

Finally, I encourage you to take time to read Proverbs 16...the entire passage and do it prayerfully.  It doesn't take but a couple minutes at most and there is a lot in there relating to what I have shared here and more that we need to be reminded of.  I hope and pray that God will bless the reading of His word to your life.  Living a surrendered life is an amazing thing.



Copyright © 2013 by Patty Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.

2013 Challenge: To Not Sew a Single Seed

Catalogs became the voice of the devil to me

What would happen to my life if I didn't sew a single seed in my garden?  I began wondering about this a few years ago when pain levels in my back began making it increasingly difficult to garden and have decided actually do it and see what will happen.  That may not sound hard to some of you, but for someone like me who has passionately gardened for decades, I am finding it at times to be very challenging.

For instance, those seed catalogs that I so love to see come in the mail have turned into the voice of the devil to me.  No more fun shopping those gorgeous photos of luscious lettuces and tempting tomatoes.   I wouldn't you know it, I opened my mailbox the day after making this decision and out popped two of my very favorite seed catalogs on the same day. "NO, NO, NO! This is not fair!" I shouted waving them in the air so God could see them and everyone else too, laughing at the irony of it all.  My neighbors must think I am a loon sometimes.

When the seed packets were put out at our local grocery store I just had to peek.  Just once you know...take a little peek to see if there was anything new this year which I realized was really seeing what I was going to be missing and a really bad idea too by the way.  Standing there in the isle in front of God and everybody I suddenly realized  I could not buy a single one of them even if I wanted to!  Resisting the temptation to envision gorgeous lush Mascara lettuce plants or killer Laciniato kale or beautiful Bull's Blood beets I could grow was awful and hard and sad.  The reality of it all, even though I knew it was good for me was harder than I expected and my eyes welled up with tears.  Suddenly I realized I had better get away from the racks before I lost it completely.

This whole exercise in letting go of growing from seed is probably good for me I keep telling myself.  Not probably, it is actually very good for me and for two reasons.  First, because I have chronic back pain, 24/7 rob your life kind of chronic pain, back pain that has gotten so bad that it is basically crippled me.  I can't sew seeds if I cannot take care of the plants and to take care of the plants I need to be able to shovel, which I can't do, and I can't kneel or bend to weed, and I absolutely cannot lug a hose...you get the picture.  (I still secretly dream of digging...I miss digging more than any others work in the garden.)  I know I need to be careful with what I do and that means the gardening has to go.  This pain was the impetus for my taking on this challenge which also has made it easier to accept.  Hopefully it will be a part of me sticking to it too.  Harder is convincing other people that gardening is not something I should be doing right now.

Some of you are probably wondering why I don't get my husband to garden. Let me stop you right there before you attempt to voice that thought...No! No! No!  That man, who I love dearly, is best when he just fixes things and stays out of the garden!  We all have things we just cannot do very well and his is gardening so don't even go there!  He proved that long ago when I trusted him to help water the veggie garden while I was at a family reunion.  I demonstrated what needed done and recommended what not to do and why...he did the later.  I got home to find half the tomato plants had died for lack of water because he thought he set up this smart watering system, the one I warned him not to.  I just cannot trust the man because he is always trying to do things by "sciencing them out" which almost always fails. (ugh...Sorry Honey...I love ya but you are no gardener.) 

At this point I have not been able to take care of the garden as it should be for three years and I am more than ready to let it go.   It has become a bit of a nightmare and needs a total makeover, as in an "extreme garden makeover".  Outside of a miracle that will not be happening by my hand unless I gain my health back and even then the desire to garden like I used to just isn't there anymore.

God has been trying to get it through my thick scull that there is something else He wants me do besides gardening which honestly was my whole life for several years.  I kept getting nudges to use other gifts and talents, like writing and art...not that I am incredibly artistic but God has this crazy way of taking what we have and making it wonderful so I am game.  But what should I do?  That was and is the big question for me right now.  There are enough options that it is making this pretty exciting actually. 

There are a lot of friends out there who know only that I know a lot about plants and little else about me.  It has been difficult for them to wrap their minds around the idea of me not gardening because it was my identity for so long.  To them I have always been "Patty the Plant Lady" and gardening is what I do!  I am Patty who talks in Latin and can grow anything from cuttings and Patty, the lady everyone goes to with their plant questions.  Yes, that WAS me, and I am still that person...just not like I used to be, I am becoming more.

Gardening and plants had taken up so much of my life I think I got lost in the process; I had become a "gardenaholic" as we gardeners jokingly say.  But honestly I think I really was addicted to it.  I used it as an escape, as my identity and I buried myself beneath it like a drunk hides in his bottle. The truer me was trapped beneath it all, my desires laying dormant, waiting to grow, to bloom the way God intended for me too from the beginning. 

This has been confirmed to me as since having to let go of being "the gardener" I have seen an increased desire to grow in other areas that were not as well cultivated as my plant nerd self was.  Desires to do things I used to do and some things I've never done before have been sprouting up like spring seedlings.  It's time for those other things to be brought forward and I am really excited by some of the possibilities.

So by laying down my trowel, the shovel and hoe, giving away all the seeds of temptation I have stored up in my pretty little heart and head, I am now opening my hands and my heart to what God has next.  I am getting ready for my next assignment and gaining better understanding of who this me is that God has designed so wonderfully.  Preparing myself in mind and body, through studying scriptures, reading books, working hard on getting my back health restored...it is me taking this journey hand in hand with my God, one step at a time.  It will be interesting to see where it takes me and I look forward to what I will discover.  Stay tuned!

Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plant for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.



Copyright © 2013 by Patty Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.

It's Not Bad Just Different

What do to, what to do?  The past 18 years I have given myself to learning about, practicing and teaching gardening and now it seems that God is taking me in a completely different direction. I'm sure to others it may even seem that I am throwing away something I should hold on to.  My answer to them is that they don't live in my life, hear what God has spoken to me, nor traveled all the paths God has taken me down to get me to let go of my life completely and surrender my future to Him without reserve.  This is not at all a sudden change either but has been quite gradual, taking years of Him working on my heart and mind, teaching me to trust Him with my now and future and to be able to lay down the past so I can head into that future with Him.  And that is exactly what I intend to do.

I think the condition of my garden today says a lot of what my own human efforts to "make" my life have rendered.  There has been some beauty and benefit, but it has not been sustainable and as I look out over the garden, though it still bears some resemblance to the once beautifully kept garden of a decade ago, it demonstrates how helpless I am to really control things after all.  The flowers still bloom, the birds and bees still flutter around happily and the cats still lounge in areas that used to be chamomile paths though the chamomile has long since died out and been replaced by other ground covers and weeds.

So the garden is in full decline now and the chaos of nature has taken over where a gardener's guiding hand once fostered order.  I no longer have the strength to dig, weed and mulch and am finding the desire to do so eclipsed by something bigger that I cannot even explain except to say that it is something I can feel deep within my soul that won't let me go.  I want to make a difference in people's lives for Jesus and to fully surrender to whatever that looks like by God's definition and not mine this time.

The fence surrounding my garden is rotting away and was pulled apart by some errant youth who thought it fun to yank at the pickets leaving a wound next to the welcoming gate and a sad spot in my heart as I remember how cheerful it looked in its beginning.  How many plans in my life have also rotted away or been pulled apart by life's circumstances.


The weeds have taken to covering the unprotected soil that I used to mulch religiously so to smother errant weed seeds, disallowing them opportunity to ruin what I had worked so hard to create. My precious plants are now fighting among themselves for the right to survive in this ground.  I have no control anymore.  I look with some regret as the lesser desirables swallow a favorite plant eventually killing it out...and such is life.  Human efforts never last.  This is a hard lesson to learn when one no longer can tend to a garden loved or maintain some favorite work or effort that brought joy and satisfaction or maybe identity to their life.  I know this is not just my story but the story of many of us.

Chaos is not a beautiful thing but savage in my garden.  My eyes long for restful views with clean paths and mulched beds and plants that are kept within their bounds.  But that is life...and life must go on...so I look to my Savior to find rest for my soul and I pray my garden will one day be renovated or even erased so I won't hear its pleading cries as I peer into the chaos that reigns there today.  Renovated even as God has renovated my heart and life, pulling out the things that I had put in place of Him and what He wants for me so that I am a blank slate ready for my Master's hand. 

If you think me crazy or foolish because I don't walk the common path of human understanding and hold fast to what I have invested all that time in to gain the knowledge I have about plants then I guess I'm right where I need to be, looking the fool for Christ.  You see it isn't about what I know at all, it's about what He knows!  And only God knows what comes next.

Whatever "next" is for me is clearly going to be different than what was.  That does not mean it will be bad, just different.  When I begin to explain to people that I am laying down this "thing" I have been doing that everyone thinks is so grand, they all blanch and moan like its bad, giving me that "look" and trying to explain to me that they think its going to come back around or that I'm somehow mistaken.  But I don't care if I ever pick it back up again.  I'm done trying to do my own thing.  I usurped the gifts God had given me of exhortation and teaching into this thing called gardening because it was there, not because I prayed about it and was following God's will.  I did it to draw attention to myself, to be known as an expert and looked up to, to be found worthy and accepted and I'm quite honestly wanting to throw up right now at the distaste of this knowledge.  How thankful I am that God loves me enough to get in my face and show me the truth of my attitudes when they stink so I can turn away from them and be restored to what He has for me.  The beautiful woman of God, gifted and pleasing in His sight.

If you know me you may not have seen all of these things in me but they were definitely there and it was ugly. Me all puffed up in my knowledge and anxiously struggling.  Thankfully God would not let me continue on and finally broke me like that imperfect pot in the potter's hands that has to be broken and then softened so it can be reshaped.  I've suffered the breaking, the pouring of the water and the reshaping and the firing...but do not yet see for what purpose I am to be used.  It may and will probably be better than anything I have ever imagined which is what I expect as God is in the business of doing things bigger and better than anything we could ever ask or even imagine.

So go ahead God, knock my socks off!  Blow me away!  Take my breath away in amazement and make me dance with the gleeful delight of a child at the site of what You do! I'm all Yours...and I can't wait to see what You have for me next.

Copyright © 2010 by Patty Hicks

All rights reserved. No part of this blog may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. All reviews must include author's name and a link back to this blog.