Fiona Veitch Smith

Space to grow

It’s the end of January and in between the snow, hail and gales there are signs that the garden will soon burst into life. I had particularly high hopes for my ornamental bath flower bed. My husband and I salvaged the old iron tub from some neighbours who were ‘modernising’. It was a sickly faded pink, so I got a pot of metal paint and spruced it up to a bright garden green. I hoped at first to grow some vegetables in it - garlic, onions, tomatoes, cantelope peppers and lettuce. Yes, all of that in a five feet by one foot tin tub.

Cramped quarters

So I filled the bath with compost which had been nicely rotting for three years and finished it off with a bag of topsoil. Never has a crop of vegetables had such an auspicious start. But alas, apart from a few scraggly lettuce leaves, nothing grew. And then, when watching an episode of BBC Gardener’s World, I discovered why - I had crammed too much into too small a space.

I have a tendency to do that: so many dreams, visions and plans and so little time to fulfil them. With my work as a writer I usually have at least five projects on the go at one time. Needless to say, not everything develops to its full potential. If only I had more space and time I could write more books and plays and grow all the vegetables I want. But I don’t and I need to realise that less may be more.

Cramming it all in

I used to be like that at church as well: on every committee, at every meeting, cramming, cramming, cramming. My spiritual life showed signs of it too. My quiet times were full of lists - people to pray for, things to be thankful for, sins to confess, requests and petitions. For years I made sure (at Dick Eastman’s advice) that I divided my hour up into praise, worship, intercession, thanksgiving, confession and petition. No wonder I came to think that Christianity was such hard work!

Then along came my daughter: an even bigger drain on already scarce time and energy resources. Through her I’ve learnt three things: what it is to love unconditionally, the artistic potential of projectile vomiting and that lists just make your life miserable. With a baby and toddler the list simply never ends and what used to be at the top is now at the bottom. As long as I had lists, I was always aware of everything I hadn’t managed to do - my failures and my sin. I could never be good enough. It reminds me of the hundreds of rules and regulations that the Jews had to keep before God relieved them of their burden with the gospel of grace. Grace gives me permission to fail, grace allows me to blow it, confess it and to start again with a clean slate. Grace gives me time and space to grow.

Starting again

So, last year it was with grace that I dug up all the scraggly vegetables and replanted the bath with crocuses, daffodils, tulips and irises. I made sure there was space and in spring and summer was rewarded with a spectacular display. I was hoping for the same this year, but last week the hound from hell took it upon her nine-month-old-self to dig up the entire plot to see what lay beneath. After screaming like a banshee and threatening to send her back to the unmentionable place, I scraped together as many of the bulbs as possible and replanted them in the greatly depleted soil. I fear this year’s display will be a shadow of what it was last year but hey, stuff happens. May I extend as much grace to my garden, my dog and myself as God extends to me.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.
1 Corinthians 15:10

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