Preparing the Soil

The spring before my wedding, I bought a peony plant. I’ve always loved peonies, and I dreamed of clipping the beautiful blooms from my own front yard to arrange in my bridal bouquet. It was a symbol of the hope and joy that was coming. As I nurtured and cared for the plant in preparation, it mirrored my own preparation for our wedding day. I was watering myself with the wisdom of those who had gone before, experiencing the necessary pruning and growing as I learned to be a fiancée and, soon, a wife.

Spring came and went. As summer approached, it became disappointingly obvious that my sweet peony bush was not going to flower that summer. After some research, I discovered this is typical. In fact, according to Gardeners.com, “Peonies rarely bloom the first year after planting. It often takes three years before you see an abundant display of flowers. But once the plants do start blooming, you can look forward to a lifetime of beautiful flowers.”

You see, the work you put into a peony bush does not yield immediate results. You must continue to care for and tend to it while trusting that the fruit of your labor will come. In the case of peonies,

“If a peony is well-situated and happy, it may bloom for 100 years or more with little or no attention. This means it’s worth spending some time up front, choosing the right planting location and preparing the soil. That said, there are many stories about forgotten peony plants found blooming in the woods against old cellar holes. But like all plants, peonies will be healthier, more vigorous and more floriferous if they have ideal growing conditions.”

Did you catch that? A well-situated peony will bloom for 100 years or more! Sure, they can bloom in an old cellar hole, but thriving peonies do so because time was spent preparing for the harvest up front.

It’s been two years since I planted that peony. As I watched our peony bloom this summer for the first time, I thought about how much its process of growth mirrors our own. The things that produce beauty in our lives, whether marriage, ministry, or parenting, so often require the quiet, unseen work of preparing the soil up front. In my own life, the hard work of premarital counseling was a seemingly fruitless pruning, but the reward is a communication-filled marriage that will continue to flourish in hard times. The hard, daily labor of foster parenting reminds me of the Greek proverb that says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” In a society that values instant results and scoffs at things that require work and time to develop, may we never forget to slow down and put in the hard work of preparing the soil.

Two years later, as I sit writing this, we are preparing the soil again. I am forty weeks pregnant and anxiously awaiting the arrival of our sweet baby boy, who we came close to meeting almost seven weeks ago. While we are grateful for the medical advances and techniques that kept our sweet boy in the womb and healthy for the rest of this pregnancy, these last seven weeks have felt agonizingly long. We are preparing our soil, but we are also ready to meet our sweet boy.

Just this week, our doula shared with me an article about the German word zwischen which means “between.” The article acknowledged the tension of the last weeks of pregnancy. The in-between stage of having one foot in pregnancy and one foot over the line of motherhood. As a culture, we struggle with these transitions. It is hard to honor the in-between. It is painful and tedious to prepare the soil for a season we can’t yet comprehend.

This waiting, this in-between, is not unique to our experiences. Scripture is full of stories of people who waited through painful and difficult circumstances while trusting that God would fulfill his promises. One of my favorite stories of preparation in the waiting is the story of David. You’ll likely recognize the story of David defeating Goliath with just a slingshot and a stone. However, long before his moment of fame as a shepherd boy who defeated a giant, David was simply faithful in the waiting. When he used his slingshot to kill off lions and bears in protecting his flock of sheep, he had no idea the grand story God was preparing for him. David’s faithfulness in his humble role as a shepherd was preparing the soil for all that was to come. Like David, God is preparing us in our waiting. These in-between moments are not wasted.

He is in the waiting. May we be faithful to prepare the soil.

Hannah Pannell is a sassy, Southern coffee lover who spends most of her days with a classroom full of little people. Hannah loves serving in the local church where her husband is an associate minister. She is passionate about gathering her people around the table over good food and even better conversation. Hannah blogs at thissweetlybrokenlife.com.

Photograph © Hannah Pannell, used with permission