Dusty Tools.

I believe that my promises are right behind the door, the bell is ringing and ringing just as loud as my heart, causing all this beautiful ruckus and annoyance. I strap on my pride for my project, already knowing my hands are dirty before my work has started. I grab my dusty tools, never really knowing how they got so grey and full of routine. At this point, my heart is monitored by mission and my bones are staggering behind me, picking everything up, trying not fall apart in the process of being blind.

I've never really had the chance or the moment to fall in love with gardening, but I've always loved the idea of it. The seeds, the sun, wearing a big floppy hat, and the moments each day you get to see change in your work, it's very...rewarding.

'Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;' (Genesis 1:29).

This is where I started to find out more about my mission, my task, something very far from a chore, the reward part. Some days, I would strut away with my shovel resting on my shoulder, not even bothered that it got to rest before me. Other days, throwing it, wanting to be as far away from it as I could in that moment, not even bothered to put it away. They were always so dusty and I never could put my finger on it, until I realized I was just as dusty as they were. Every day, they were there to remind me of the shimmer of heaven because I was missing it, I was missing that I was made for something so much bigger. Something so completely possible.

As I walked away from my garden, filled to the brim, ready to burst with artichokes and peonies everywhere, I realized every bloom, every crop, every inch was telling my story, the good, and the good- eventually. Every day as I stood beside the mammoth of sunflowers that they were, convincing myself of my tallness and maturity, but in fact, we were always the same height.

The seeds, were given to me, the tools, given to me, the knowledge imparted. As I cleaned up and scrubbed off all the dirt and jumped into bed, I was so very excited to get dirty again tomorrow. For I now knew that I was created for creating good and I was assigned the job of flipping the pages to prove so. We are capable of being gardeners when we know nothing about gardening because we are given a seed, a seed that trusts there is no half-hearted work ahead. A seed that needs love and living water to help it blossom.

I used to taste judgement on my tongue, worries that someone else's sunflowers were taller or brighter, and in those moments my flesh really did rule over my bones. All that was hidden underneath the denim of my jacket was labeled with guilt and begged me to never take the jacket off.

But then He said '...It shall be food for you' (Genesis 1:29). I can relate to people who feel like they have had to fight for something. I feel like I have been fighting my whole life for many and different things, but as of now, I feel like there is nothing I haven't been rewarded for, and I have a whole garden to prove it. I get to write and remember the sweetness of being in love with Jesus and I also stand brave in the hardship of being in love with someone I don't understand.

I'm the girl with the shovel, the one as tall as sunflowers and twinning with my dusty tools. I have got a whole floor to ceiling bookshelf of my stories, inspired by my Dad who tells me that I am made for heaven, but here on earth is my privilege to flip the pages, where I don't have to wipe my feet off at the doormat beforehand. I get to run inside, leap on my favorite chair, kick my feet up and open and close beautiful books filled with pressed flowers and shrubs, never forgetting my lessons.

Maybe your not a gardener, maybe your something else, but the purpose, the relation, the right hand, it is always yours to grab ahold of. He will never not have a special little job, just for you.

words and photo by Tianna Munro