THE HEALING GARDEN

It’s early in the morning when the family member came out into the lobby. They had been up all night with their loved one. With little privacy, they cried on the lobby couch. A night shift staff member was exhausted. Someone had called off and they had much of the floor by themselves. A resident wanted to have a reason to get up out of bed to do what he once loved…gardening. For a lot of different reasons, I began to envision a garden…more specifically, a healing garden. What would be like if family members could go outside, sit on a bench, overlooking a variety of gardens and hear a babbling brook? Or the staff member who just needed to renew their strength by looking at the firefly lights swaying back and forth through the breeze of the evening? Or the resident who got up for the first time, eager to get to his garden before the sun rose….to see his tomatoes, cucumbers, jalapeño peppers, burst forth from the soil? Thus, the vision for a healing garden. It was just about this time, when a resident who was staying with us for rehab, overheard me talking to someone about this vision. He owned a landscaping business. He eagerly started making the plans for this garden. And then he left, promising to come back and build the garden. But then everything stopped. With no leadership in place, we couldn’t go forward. Have you ever had a dream for something, something much bigger than you, something that only God can bring forth? Have the obstacles , or the impossibilities of it, stopped you from going forward? Moses experienced this very thing when God was calling him to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the promise land of milk and honey. God did promise Moses that they would eventually get there…but he never said it would be Moses to bring them there. Instead, God allowed Moses to see the promise land but it would be his assistant Joshua , to bring them into the new land. Well, just like God, we have an amazing new leader who might be just the person to bring forth this new healing garden. Because my time is almost up. Like Tim Tebow shared at church this weekend, the plans WE thought were His may have only been the stepping stone to the bigger picture of our purpose. I may have had a vision for the healing garden, but it will be others who will see it through. How about you? Are you willing to dream big dreams but flexible enough to allow God to write the ending? It’s not easy, but when you know the depth of love God has for you, you can give your dreams to Him, knowing He will fulfill your greatest desires at the end of your story.