Every winter almost does me in. February is my least favorite month, so awful every year that I start dreading it as soon as the Christmas decorations come down. I don’t know if I get Seasonal Affective Disorder or what, but something about how winter seems to really dig its claws in deeper every year, how there’s never enough light or warmth, always gets me down.

Up until the New Year the cold weather and all its accoutrements are festive - snow and sweaters and chilly air go together nicely with trees, and eggnog, and lights strung up outside the house. But take all that down and all you have are short, dark days. Leaving for the office in darkness and coming home in darkness. Cold that penetrates bones so deeply that the only way to warm up is with a bath so hot you’re pretty sure it’s going to leave you sterile.

Winter is awful, and every year I feel I’ve just barely survived it. That’s why I always order twice as many seeds as I need - I always start my garden at least a month too early just to remind myself that life happens, that winter won’t last forever and take us all down with it.

All my favorite of Jesus’ parables use agricultural imagery. This might be that I am the spawn of farmers, on my dad’s side, and that I was an adolescent before I ate store-bought vegetables with any regularity. Some of my best memories of my childhood home in western Oklahoma are of eating fresh vegetables right out of the dirt, fresh peaches off our trees and strawberries, blackberries and blueberries right off the vine.

These memories, combined with my desperation near the end of every winter, led me to start a vegetable garden in my backyard.

Being a gardener requires so many of the things I am terrible at, namely, patience, diligence, and faith. It makes me crazy sometimes, because it’s all about the process, and all about the waiting.

Gardening is an act of faith, after all, which I think is why Jesus so often relied on its imagery in his parables. You take something so small that under any normal circumstances you wouldn’t even notice it, a seed as small and dark as a little period floating around in the palm of your hand, and you give it good soil, and enough water, sunlight and time.

I hate this. I want to put a seed in the ground, throw a little water down, and then have steamed zucchini on a plate. I don’t want to wait, and I certainly don’t want to tend. I’m hungry now! And no matter how much compost I throw down, no matter how much I crouch on the ground waiting for the little green shoots to crack the dirt, I have absolutely no control over the timing.

This is why you’ll find me, in the coming days of early spring, with the seeds in the ground and all the life happening where I can’t see it, four or five times a day staring intently at my little two hundred square feet of tilled-up dirt. I squat, I stand, I get down on all fours and squint, then stand back up again, wave my hands over the whole business, and shout, “GROW!”

There you have it: a picture of my spiritual life in action. Here’s another one.

I have a really good friend that I haven’t talked to in a couple of years. I think about him literally every day, but we just haven’t spoken. The last time we saw one another was slightly unpleasant, but to be honest that’s nothing new.

See, this old, old friend of mine sorta, kinda made my life a living hell for awhile there after I came out. A lot of people said some pretty scary and horrible things to me, and even worse things about me, but he was the worst on both counts. Still, I’m a pretty forgiving guy and I told myself to just let it all go. I’d have done anything to keep our friendship rocking along on its rickety tracks, and so I just didn’t think about how he was hurting me.

So a couple years ago, after a visit together went south, we didn’t call. He moved cities. I came back to my life, thinking eventually one of us would pick up the phone and we’d work through all the unpleasantness.

I kept picking up the phone and trying to dial, but each time I did so a movie played in my mind, a preview of the scenarios that could unfold when my friend picked up the phone. I’d backpedal and apologize, despite the fact that I felt I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d claim total responsibility for the fact that we hadn’t spoken, despite the fact that I hadn’t received a call, and then we’d have a horrible, awkward conversation where I would explicitly assume responsibility for keeping our friendship alive.

Or:

I’d yell and scream and let out every grievance I had, every horrible thing I knew he’d said behind my back, and all the ways I’d felt wronged and belittled and hurt over the years. I honestly hadn’t realized any of that was still there; I’d been so desperate to cling to my friend that I had buried it all, put it down in the darkness and expected it to die.

But here it was, sprung to life, and I suddenly found myself walking around my house, speaking out loud TO NO ONE, berating my friend, airing my grievances.

Being crazy felt good for awhile; it felt good to let all this rise to the surface, to break through. It had been rotting down there with no light and all that heat, and I allowed myself to feel all these horrible, awful feelings. Then, I deleted his number out of my phone. Having it there felt like having a bit of plutonium in my pocket.

I’d love to be able to tell you that I cut the ribbon, that I let all my anger and resentment fly away. Truth is, I don’t really forgive my friend very much just yet. But I pray every single day for the grace to let go, just a little at a time. After all, if you don’t let go, you’re only going to get dragged.

So I’m trying. I haven’t called. I haven’t trashed him behind his back to our mutual friends. I haven’t let go, but I’m trying to. I’m standing over the bed, the place where I’ve put all these prayers, waving my arms over them and shouting, “GROW!”

I’m trying hard to provide good conditions for forgiveness to happen. I’m trying to let the sunlight in on all my hurt and sadness, to not listen to all these weedy voices of resentment and entitlement and moral superiority, but instead to pull them up when I see them.

Becoming a gardener has helped. Like writing it has helped me to slow down, to really look around at things and not be in such a hurry. I wait, and I wait, and I work the land, provide the conditions, and as if by some miracle, things grow. Sooner than you think there are vines, and flowers, and bushels of vegetables that you can share with the neighbors.