Babies and Gardens and Marriage and Garden Zones
April showers brought more than May flowers, it also brought a lot of spring babies. Folks keep joking about the baby boom that will happen nine months from now, but in my circle the babies just keep booming and blooming. Everywhere I look right now my friends and acquaintances are holding, nursing, changing, smelling, and showing their babes in arms. And I am here for it. Trust me. There is nothing in the world like a newborn stretching their limbs out in their newfound freedom or the smell of the space right below a baby’s ear, that sweet milky newborn smell, the slow crawl of an infant’s eyes as they move from right to left. One of my friends had a baby last week and I have a physical ache right below my ribcage every time I think about how long it will be until I can hold him.
Despite our plans and intentions, the possibility of becoming parents has been further delayed for us. We had some hopes wrapped up in some dreams wrapped up in some plans and those plans and dreams and hopes came to a screeching halt mid-March, with no promise or plan for when we could pick them back up. What does the future look like? We have no idea. I mean, we never really know, do we? But right now, for almost all of us, we really don’t know.
This morning I shared a little thing on Instagram about how living in the suburbs is teaching me to cultivate what I have and not what I don’t. For me, in Texas, it means planting drought resistant plants and sun-loving perennials. It does not mean planting lilacs and peonies on my front lawn and wasting my time, resources, and energy hoping something will bloom where it’s planted. Part of cultivating what I have and not what I don’t, means also not trying to grow what cannot grow where it’s not meant to grow. Let’s make this practical.
I don’t have babies right now, despite our desire for them, our hope for them, and our attempt at moving in a direction toward them. We are babyless. We have a choice now: spend all our time looking at baby clothes, build a nursery, cultivate jealousy in our hearts toward our friends who have babies, and make snide comments to those who have what we desire. Or, we can say, “Lord, goodness, I have no idea what the future looks like, but you know we desire the blessing of a family and we thought we were going to be able to move in that direction this year. Now it looks like we’re not. Our plans have changed, but Lord, you haven’t. You do not want us to try and cultivate a life that looks like a life with children when we do not have children. You want us to cultivate what you have given to us right now: the gift of childlessness. So help us do that with faith and joy for our friends who get what we desire.”
Regarding marriage, we can despise our roommates because they’re not the spouse we want, we can begrudge our friends who get married, we can cultivate jealousy in our hearts toward those who have someone to share their home, and we can expend our energy thinking about how different our lives would be if we were only married. Or, we can cultivate the life God has given us today. The same goes for finances or community or friendship or dream jobs or self-sufficient-kids or fill in the blank. As long as you’re trying to cultivate a northern plant in a southern climate, you’re going to keep getting disappointed. As long as you’re trying to make your life look like the life of someone who has what you want, you’re going to keep getting disappointed.
God has given this life to you. This life. Right now. The one you’re living. It’s the only life you’ll get and God intended it in grace, goodness, sovereignty, and love for you. He stewarded it to you. Only you get to live your life. Just as only I get to live in this house with this yard with these perennials in this climate for this April of 2020. I have to care for what’s right in front of me.
I know that’s not what many of us want to hear. It sometimes feels easier to escape into the fantasy world where our yard is full of lilacs and the temperature in the summer never gets above 85 and I have a baby and you have a husband and your husband is perfect and we have some kind of unicorn friendship, but ultimately that fantasy is going to lead to frustration, anger, resentment, and a desecration of the sacred thing that God has given to us.
So. I don’t know. Where do you live? What’s your zone, to continue the garden illustration? Plant what will flourish in that zone. God made it to flourish in that zone. This is my zone. So I’m planting purple coneflowers and yarrow and rosemary and a childless home with childless rhythms and childless sorrows and childless joys.
