• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • My Books
    • True You
    • Katharina and Martin Luther
    • 50 Women Every Christian Should Know
    • Spiritual Misfit
  • Blog
  • On My Bookshelves
  • Contact
  • Privacy & Disclosure Policy

Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

spiritual disciple of gardening

When You Find Rot at the Root…Again

May 2, 2018 By Michelle

Recently I rearranged my office. I swapped the curbside table I’d been using for a legitimate desk to give myself more workspace, Goodwilled a bunch of knickknacks, and shifted the orchid from the top of the bookshelf, where it had sat for the last two years, to the corner of my desk.

Not long after, I noticed an influx of ants, mainly on my desk, but some on the floor beneath it too. I thought at first they were emanating from my laptop. I’m a snacker-writer, so I worried that a few too many crumbs had fallen between the keys and provided a pantry of sorts for the ants.

But yesterday morning I discovered the source of the ants was not my laptop, but my beautiful orchid. When I gingerly lifted the plant from its plastic pot, I saw immediately that the root ball was swarming with hundreds of ants. They’d made a nest amid the moist, gnarled roots. Beneath all its prolific beauty, down at the root, the plant was a decaying mess.

Initially I tried to save the orchid, but as I stood over the kitchen sink with the plant in my hand, the ants scattering helter-skelter across the counter and down the cabinets, I quickly realized my efforts were futile. Finally, ants running up my arms, I dashed out the front door and dumped the whole plant, pot and all, into the trash can at the curb.

Here’s the question I asked myself yesterday afternoon as I sat at my desk, its white surface disinfected and clean of ants, the orchid gone:

How many times in my life have I been wooed by the picture-perfect exterior — the intoxicating, alluring blooms — only to discover that my desires were actually rotten at the core?

Readers, subscribers, social media shares, book contracts, sales, achievement, success. I’ve wanted it all – a whole bountiful spray of blooms, bending heavy under the weight of abundance. But what I’ve discovered is that my desires are often a tangled mess of decay deep down at the root.

Sometimes we rediscover something about ourselves we thought we’d “taken care of” a good long time ago. Sometimes we realize we’ve fallen prey to the same-old root rot problem again — the problem we thought we’d fixed, the problem we thought we’d already overcome.

And then up it rears, the unseemly underneath exposed again, making you want to chuck the whole thing in the trash can at the curb, roots and blooms and pot and all.

It’s hard work, this turning back, this beginning again. I’m not alway sure I’m up for it, to be quite honest. I feel like I should be further along on this spiritual journey by now, less inclined to succumb to the same old temptations.

Yet despite my frustration and dismay, and no matter how rotten the roots beneath the blooms, I remember that God doesn’t chuck me into the trash can at the curb, roots and blooms and pot and all. I remember that God gives me grace, again and again and again. He graciously shows me the error of my ways. He shines his light into my dark places, not so that I will recoil in shame, but so I can see his love, even there.

God patiently redirects my gaze from the pretty, enticing blooms to the roots underneath that need tending and nurturing. And he reminds me that he is always with me, even there, even as I begin again.

I have a new orchid on my desk. I bought it at Trader Joe’s – they sell them cheap there. It’s not as pretty as the one I had before. This one is a bit spindly, with far fewer blooms. But its roots are clean of ants and decay, wrapped tightly together, snug in the bottom of the pot.

I’ll tend this plant more diligently than I did its predecessor. Every now and then I’ll lift it gently by its stem from the pot to look underneath, remembering that the orchid’s health depends not just on the pretty blooms above, but also on the condition of its roots below.

A post from the archives (2015), but still (sigh) very much relevant. 

Filed Under: idolatry Tagged With: Idolatry, spiritual disciple of gardening

Allowing Space in Order to Be Filled

April 11, 2018 By Michelle

This time of year I’m always itchy to get my hands in the dirt. As the temperature begins to warm and the ground thaws, I am filled with a restless energy, eager to slip my feet into my plastic gardening clogs, grab a spade from the garage, and dig in.

I love the feeling of satisfaction that comes from clearing a bed of decayed oak leaves, shelled acorns and desiccated weeds, carefully pulling away the detritus of winter to reveal tender green perennials peeking up through the soil.

I love mixing in the dark, loamy compost, turning over the dirt with my shovel and then smoothing it flat with the hoe.

I love carving a shallow trench with my trowel, tearing open a packet of Romaine lettuce seeds, dropping them one by one into the earth and then pushing the soil gently over them with my gloved hand.

The trouble is, I don’t always follow the directions on the back of the seed packet. Rather than spacing my lettuce seeds the recommended six to eight inches apart, I cram them into the soil, sometimes barely allowing an inch or two between seeds. Inevitably, after the seedlings have sprouted a few weeks later, I’m forced to thin my rows, pulling perfectly healthy plants and tossing them into the compost pile in order to make room for the others to flourish.

Maybe you recognize the metaphor here. Perhaps you, too, have the tendency to overplant not just in the garden, but in your life as well.

I often fill my days, weeks and months to overflowing, cramming every bit of space with more – more busyness, more commitments, more projects, more socializing, more stuff. I buy more, I plan more, I do more, I produce more. I sow so many seeds, my “plants” end up jammed together with no space in between.

I believe this urge to sow our days with an overabundance of seeds and to crowd every space to overcapacity comes from an unnamed desire within us, a deep longing for contentment, fulfillment and peace and, beneath that, a longing to be known, valued and loved.

Some of us attempt to quench this longing with a full calendar and a demanding schedule. Others turn to food, alcohol, drugs, another name brand purse or a larger, fancier house to fill the void.

We strive to fill this deep yearning we sense in ourselves, not realizing, or perhaps not admitting, that the best thing we can do is to be “receptive to the unfulfilled,” as author Sara Miles says, neither filling it nor denying it, but simply sitting with the emptiness and acknowledging the presence of longing.

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord,” St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Herein lies the essence of our longing. God made us for him – to be with him and in him, to be known by him and loved by him.

He made us in his image as his most precious beloveds, and yet, we cannot rest in intimate communion with him until we make space in our crowded lives for him to enter in.

We must first allow ourselves to be empty, to sit like tiny seeds, vulnerable in the dark spaciousness. We must acknowledge and listen to the longing deep within us without scrambling to fill it, trusting that in time, God will meet us there and fill us with himself.

This post first ran in the Lincoln Journal Star on April 7.

Filed Under: rest, slow, spiritual practices Tagged With: space, spiritual disciple of gardening, St. Augustine

Primary Sidebar

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a Triple Type A, “make it happen” (my dad’s favorite mantra) striver and achiever (I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which tells you everything you need to know), but these days my striving looks more like sitting in silence on a park bench, my dog at my feet, as I slowly learn to let go of the false selves that have formed my identity for decades and lean toward uncovering who God created me to be.

Read Full Bio

Available Now — My New Book!

Blog Post Archives

Footer

Copyright © 2023 Michelle DeRusha · Site by The Willingham Enterprise· Log in