The Garden

I procrastinated about starting a blog the same way I did writing my first journal. I finally wrote in 1995 but upside down! Well – my blog didn’t turn out the way I imagined it either! But I hear “just do it”, from lots of encouraging comments.

First I named the blog, “The Garden” to go with the photo of the beautiful garden.  But it wasn’t pictured.

I want to explain why I used the name “The Garden”.  I was attending a Women’s retreat at the Green Lake Conference Center.  We were instructed to go be alone with the Lord for quiet time.  I did not know what that meant.  I was a busy wife, mom to five children – two which were very medically needy.

To be able to get away for a two day retreat was a lot of planning respite care for  my two children with special needs. On my mind was schedules; bus, medicine, feeding, etc.  When I was challenged to go spend quiet time, I knew where I wanted to go because a cousin had been married at this conference center.  I chose that special place – the garden. The garden had an old gate to get in. At the gate was a mailbox with a map of all the perennials planted in different shaped plots.  I would walk around and look at them.  When I opened the gate to go in I was not expecting what I found there.  The first thing that met my eye was an old sign with a poem on it.  It said, “A garden is an uncluttered place where thing eternal meet us face to face.”  I cried as I knew God was meeting me there and speaking to me about all the cares of this world that were overwhelming me.  I was new to reading a Bible but I read some verses that spoke to me and my situation. James 4:14 “Why you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

I left that retreat different – I had a peace and a perspective not of my own. This experience in “The Garden” was the beginning of something new in my life – a journey I have recorded for 28 years in my journals that I want to share as I learn to blog. Stay tuned….

“A garden is an uncluttered place, where things eternal meet you face to face“.

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