Imagine You Are a Coffee Plant
Let’s take a cue from nature about the need for healing and the healing process. Imagine your life is like this coffee plant. Started from a seed and planted in rich soil, you are ready for growth. In your infancy state, you have all you need to mature at the moment. But what happens if those conditions change?
Pain
Perhaps early on, or later in life, you encountered deep pain. The soil you were planted in dried up and stopped nourishing you. Your source of love and nurturing grew toxic and you withered internally.
Any number of wounds in life can leave your mind and your heart in this malnourished state. Trauma, loss, fear, abuse, illness, crisis…all can leave you drying from the inside out. Your once secure, hopeful, full-of-life soil becomes cluttered with thorns and rocks. You carry on though deprived of the nutrients you need. Love, support, peace dry up and you begin to wither.
Weeds & Thorns
Pain halted the cultivation of the soil of your heart and mind. Now, weeds and thorns grow wild within you. Anger, resentment, anxiety, broken relationships, hurt, unforgiveness, unhealthy patterns, insecurity…all these crowd out the real you. They cause more pain and leave you longing for your soil to be tended by one who knows the real you. You’re a “coffee plant” that just needs fresh soil and care.
Healing is Tough Work
If you are familiar with agriculture, you know the next part is tough! This is why so many avoid healing. There is no magic formula for healing soil. Neither is there a magic wand for healing your life. It’s a painful process.
Dig
Whether with a trusted friend, a pastor, a counselor, or even alone with Jesus, you must begin to dig. You must identify and remove the source of your soil’s demise. Pain, woundedness, shame.
Not gonna lie. This part hurts. Every warning flare and self-preservation mechanism you have used to this point will engage. Prepare to face your pain, and resist the urge to lash out or cope in unhealthy ways. Because you are facing your pain, you will feel your pain. If this is not a safe practice for you to undertake alone, seek someone safe on whom you can rely for support.
Nourish
Removing the rocks, weed and thorns will never fully heal the soil. Nutrients must be added to restore life to the dust. You must begin feeding your heart and mind with the Truth of God’s Word. He loves you and His word is full of promises and revelations of His character that will help you grow into who you were meant to be.
Other practices will help feed your soul as well. Worship through music, meditation on scripture or songs, spending time with others who enrich your connection to God. There are many ways to explore the depths of who God is and how He will make you whole in His time and His way.
You may also need to learn truths about yourself and others. It may be that you believed you weren’t worthy of love. Now it’s time to feed your heart and mind with truths about your value. Nourishing the soul is a life-long process, just as keeping soil healthy enough to produce requires consistent attention.
The Master Gardener
Jesus used many agriculture metaphors to explain his mission. He longs to bring you close in relationship with Him through daily interaction in prayer and scripture. He is the One who can best heal the soil of your life and bring you to full maturity.
Get My New Book: The Slimy Pit Was Worth It!
No one on the planet escapes the clash between faith and harsh reality. Suffering results, even magnifies. As painful moments turn into days, weeks, sometimes years, God’s seeming inaction wounds and mystifies.
Some press in more fervently for answers, while others give up from the weight of bearing sorrow upon sorrow. As a result, suffering people need practical application of the faith they cling to, not only to find breakthrough in their circumstances alone, but to mature into the person Christ desires them to be, for all eternity.
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“Longing for clarity, we agonize with these questions daily, hoping comfort will dawn through their answers. The danger of the Slimy Pit lurks here. We feel ripped off. Cheated of the good life everyone else gets to keep living without us. Robbed of the peace our faith once provided. In misery, we begin counting our losses. Heavy damages stack up and cloud our vision. Bright futures fade and cynicism moves in.
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Excerpt | The Slimy Pit Was Worth It
“If we’re not careful, our journey with Christ can feel like a wilderness expedition, with no end in sight. Moments of discovery along the way, but still an uphill climb, with a constant fight for survival. Sometimes, this describes our current season well.
But this is not the seeking Jesus offers. He isn’t inviting us to blindly follow Him on a never-ending path of struggle for faith. He uses the analogy of the path to explain our walk out of darkness and into the light of salvation. However difficult, this path leads to life not to uncertainty.”
Excerpt | The Slimy Pit Was Worth It
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