On Handling the Uncomfortable

And my unfiltered feelings about garden gloves

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I told you summer would bring more garden-themed posts…

Gardens are my summer delight. A luscious dessert after a long, drawn-out winter dinner. Actually, if seasons were food, summer would probably a burger bar, garden salad, and a side of grilled veggies. BUT, I feel like I step into summer as if it’s dessert. Perhaps a strawberry trifle? Fall is chili and apple crisp; winter is soup and sourdough bread; spring is colorful salads.

Maybe the analogies aren’t perfect. Regardless, I want you, my reader friend, to understand that summer is a time for me to thrive.

So, gardens are life-giving. As I write this, my full-bodied Columbine and bright pink peonies have lost their blooms, and my Echinacea and English Phlox are well on their way to lovely colorful bursts. A comforting sign that summer is here. I’m proud to say that my 3- or 4-year-old raspberries are already producing tremendously. Mmmm, mmm!

Photo by Zachary Keimig on Unsplash

The Problem with Garden Gloves

Some people use garden gloves, but I prefer to dig bare-handed. Until this year, I’d buy a pair of gloves from the dollar store at the start of each gardening season, but inevitably they end up separated, drenched and mangled in different parts of the yard within weeks of their purchase. Every year I think, I’ll do better this year. I will NOT have dirt in my fingernails all summer. To no avail.

So this year I didn’t buy a pair. Problem is, this year, my raspberry garden’s chosen form of weed is pokey, prickly, thorny thistle plants. I guess it’s called “Canada Thistle.” My first time pulling them out earlier this spring, my hand instinctively recoiled as if I touched my heated cast iron prepped for baking sourdough. I was shocked at how bad those thistle pokeys actually hurt. And unfortunately, they blanketed the raspberries, intent on choking out the berries. Many were probably 2.5-3 feet high.

Sooo, I sighed and dug out my last-season, dirt-crusted gloves. Onward.  

I didn’t like it. My hands screamed for air, for the cool touch of wet dirt. Something meant for protection, instead was suffocating. (You see the metaphor already, don’t you.)

Seriously though, my hands felt less capable of doing the dirty work, but they were surely saved from destruction by a thousand pokes.

So what? (There are worse things in the world, I know!)

Well, for one, never buy me a nice, high-quality pair of garden gloves, as I will end up feeling very guilty when I forget where they are and they spend all winter outside.

Second, sometimes (or all the time?) we want to do things our own way, but God might see it differently. Perhaps his way of doing things will protect us from a hard consequence, or maybe a hard consequence is exactly what he wants us to experience. We’ve probably had it both ways at some point in our lives. Garden gloves protect my hands, but wearing them comes with the sacrifice of not feeling the grit and grime of dirt and hard work on my hands—a feeling I love.

Bigger Circumstances than Garden Gloves

When all Marty and I wanted was to get pregnant, and we didn’t get pregnant…month after month, year after year… God knew that if we did things his way, we’d get to raise our three lovely children that we have now. But I didn’t know that, and I didn’t like it in the meantime. The struggle was suffocating.

God had a better way. He protected us and brought us goodness, but it didn’t feel good in the process.

(And I don’t share that snippet of my infertility journey to say that everything will just work out how we want it to, if we “do things God’s way.” Life and faith don’t work out that way.)

Knowing this doesn’t make the hard times less hard, but knowing this does help give meaning and purpose to our struggles. Everything might be wrong sometimes, but even so, nothing is ever in vain (except vacuuming, which is almost always in vain. Also watering plants when it rains later the same day!).

Be Okay with Discomfort (sometimes)

Anyyyways, the Canada Thistle just keeps popping up, but the worst of it is over. In fact, the little ones that pop up are so small, I can pull them out at the root without donning any gloves. But to get to this point, I had to do something uncomfortable and to be honest, very annoying. Maybe the point is, sometimes, it’s worth it to feel discomfort and move forward, because now we harvest a bowlful of raspberries daily.

I’m not sure if you needed to hear this or if there was anything here for you today. If anything, maybe you have a new appreciation or a new disdain for garden gloves. Thanks for reading, friends.

What about you?

Are you a “get your hands dirty and have dirt in your nails all summer long” person or a “Ew! Wear the gloves!” person?

I’d love to hear. :)

Peace to you and yours, my friends.