How are you tending to your soul garden during these chaotic times?

The world seems to be spinning out of control with wars, injustice, division and hopelessness. Distractions are invading our lives at greater acceleration.

Finding true peace and joy seems to be more and more difficult. If you’ve ever felt this way, you’re in the right place.

This blog post will discuss tending your soul’s garden so you can create beauty and contentment.

Understanding Your Soul Garden

Your soul garden is the essence of who you are. Your soul garden, therefore, is complex and as expansive as each individual’s personal experience.

What grows in your soul’s garden includes any beliefs you have either inherited or adopted through study and inquiry. And your garden also includes the many wounds and fears you have received or embraced along your journey of life. 

Everything growing in your soul garden has an impact on your thoughts, attitudes, feelings and actions. 

Observing Your Soul Garden

It’s important to take notice of what is growing in your garden in order to live a life filled with peace and joy.

Our lives are full of many good things, including, family, friends, careers, working in the home, church and volunteering, to name a few.  Sometimes these good things can keep us from being quiet enough to listen to our souls.

Oftentimes we allow distractions to keep us from exploring our souls. Sometimes the distractions may be unavoidable; but sometimes we are held captive to our distractions and they rule over us rather than the other way around.

Observing our gardens is nothing more than getting quiet enough to listen to our thoughts and embrace our feelings so we can learn what they are telling us about our spiritual lives and our story.

Identifying Your Garden’s Condition

Sometimes we may not realize there are weeds in our garden. Our soul gardens are precious and fragile things. The slightest negative comment can send us into depression. The unintended cold shoulder from a stranger can aggravate long-forgotten wounds. 

In order to identify those wounds and fears that can cause devastation to our souls, we must take the time to dig in the dirt of our hearts and minds and uncover the brokenness.

Socrates said in Apology 38a, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” If we don’t examine our souls and the garden of thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, wounds and fears, we will not be able to grow fruitfully. Without knowing what lurks below the surface, we won’t be able to replace the weeds or nurture the fruit.

Tending Your Soul Garden

Just as you need to ensure your flower or vegetable garden is well cared for, so too tending your soul garden requires attentiveness.

Sometimes you need to water and fertilize your physical garden and these activities are also required for your soul garden. In addition, weeding is a necessary activity for both physical and soul gardens.

Watering Required

Every garden requires water and nutrients in order to prosper. This is also true of your soul. As a Christ follower, water and nutrients can be references to the Word and the Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5, Eph 5:26)

Watering a physical garden takes time and work. Somehow we seem to forget we also need to invest time and yes, even work, to ensure our soul receives the water and nutrients necessary for survival. 

Spending time studying Scripture can be life-changing. Talking to God, listening to the Holy Spirit, for His encouragement and conviction enables us to renew our minds and thoughts and transform our attitudes and actions. (Rom 12:2)

Gratitude is another way to water your soul. Spending time each day recounting just three things for which you are grateful can change the brain pathways over time and enable you to grow in contentment and peace.

Weeding Required

If you’ve ever had a vegetable or flower garden, I’m sure you’ve noticed how weeds can overtake the garden and squeeze out the finite nutrients intended for the fruit. In our soul gardens, weeds lead to diminished fruitfulness in our lives. 

In order to remove weeds in a physical garden, they need to be attended to regularly. When you discover those small weeds, that’s the best time to remove them. They are easier to remove because the roots haven’t grown deep and thick.

If you wait until the weed has fortified its root by stealing the fruits’ nutrients, you may not be able to fully remove the root. In that case, the weed will continue to grow and the only way to remove it is to dig it out with some type of gardening tool. This could be a more difficult task and cause the fruit to be disrupted.

Weeding Performed

Applying these concepts to our soul garden hints at how weeds in our lives⏤wounds and fears⏤can have such a negative influence. Some of these wounds are so fortified within us that we need the help of a professional counselor to uncover and remove the weed.

Other weeds are revealed through Scripture and the Holy Spirit, who convicts us of the sin that so easily entangles us (Heb 12:1). These weeds can quench the life of God within us if left unattended.

Recognizing our sin and confessing it to the Lord and to the injured party (if applicable) is how we weed our soul garden. While it can be difficult to admit to ourselves that we have sinned against the Lord, we need to take this step of faith and trust that He will forgive us our sin and cleanse us from *all* unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

Celebrating Your Soul Garden

As you continue to nurture the fruit within your life and work to remove the weeds, your soul garden can become more fruitful. The thoughts and anxieties that once held you captive will slowly have less effect because they are being weeded out and replaced with truth.

As you allow the Lord to minister to your life wounds through personal work or professional counseling, you will begin to experience freedom, joy and peace. This is cause for celebration!

With attentiveness and hard work, you can tend to your soul garden. You may find yourself on a narrow path as others may not find the time investment worthwhile.

Some people may prefer to live in a state of tension and anxiety, forever putting their heads in the sand to avoid the chaos around them and within their souls.

But there is a better way. 

By following the above exercises: observing, watering and weeding your soul garden, you will find your heart and mind will be more at rest and freer to experience the joys all around you.

Take time to tend your soul garden and experience a fruitful life.

Need a little help with getting quiet? Request the free guide, Reflections for Your Soul.