Welcome to My Garden of Words by Nina Faye Morey

Spring is the time of year when everyone gets anxious to get outside in the fresh air and sunshine. Those of us who are gardeners have already been planning what to plant for months. We’ve been studying our seed catalogues throughout those last cold days of winter, choosing the seeds we want to grow. We may even have started germinating some seedlings indoors in preparation for planting. My favourite spring ritual is the annual trip to a local nursery to choose which flowers I want to transplant into my flowerbeds and flowerpots. The warm, moist, fragrant air; the sunshine streaming down; and the glorious rainbow of colours that greets you once you step inside the greenhouse is enough to cure anyone’s winter doldrums and awaken a yearning to create that prize-winning garden.

Writers are the gardeners of words. We spend plenty of time planning what to write. We read, study, and research the Scriptures and various writings, searching for those special seeds that inspire us and so titillate our senses that we want to plant them in our next nonfiction book or novel. We hope that if we do our groundwork properly and sow these seeds under just the right conditions, they will germinate and flourish. So we diligently toil to transplant them into vivid, descriptive words and sentences that will likewise captivate our readers. As a writer, I pray that I will be able to skillfully sow the seeds God has given me in such a way that they will grow and blossom in readers’ hearts, souls, and spirits.

Writing, like gardening, not only demands preparation, but also a lot of perspiration and patience. Beyond selecting what seeds to sow, we need to carefully prepare the plot in which to plant them if we want them to take root, sprout, bloom, and bear fruit. As Jesus explained to His followers in the Parable of the Sower, if seeds are sown into ground that is not properly prepared, they will not germinate and grow (Matthew 3: 4-8). We can’t just scatter our seeds indiscriminately; we first need to sketch an outline of our plot. Then we can plant them seed by seed, working our way methodically line by line, watering and fertilizing them with just the right components, so that the entire composition contains rhyme and reason. As we work section by section, according to our plan, we must make sure that each part contributes to the overall composition. Placing faith in our creativity, we work patiently to ensure these seeds gradually germinate and grow into an intriguing garden of words.

If we want our creation to develop and mature into a true work of art, it will require the sweat of our brow throughout its entire season of growth. And we will need the patience to labour on through several seasons if we want to create a perennial masterpiece. If we tend our creation carefully, it will flourish. If we fail to regularly water, weed, and fertilize, it will become dry, barren, and lifeless. Weeds may resemble pretty flowers at first glance, but they will overgrow and overshadow the beauty of our budding creation if allowed to proliferate. If we make no effort to uproot them, they will sap the strength and smother the life out of our precious creation. Therefore, it’s vital that we keep reseeding and reworking our garden of words over and over again until we’re absolutely convinced that we’ve created a beautiful piece we can be proud of. Then we may even dare to daydream about winning that coveted award or creating a work that will someday become a classic.

Photos: Pixabay Free Images

What comes first…the seed or the dirt? by Melanie Fischer

Without the dirt there is no where to plant the seed. Without the seed there is no how to produce more seeds in order to plant.

Do we writers need inspiration in order to write, or do we need to write in order to become inspired?

In my experience, it is when those moments of complete un-inspiration are combined with the

discipline of showing up that the Lord has blessed my pen the most. In the times when I have threatened to quit, begged to stop, stomped my feet or stuck out my lip in a pout, but put my fingers to the keyboard anyway, that suddenly—lo and behold—something turned on.

The farmer toils in his field, then one day stands back to see what has come from his works. This is

what encourages him to plant again—but not until the work is done first. It is the physical act of sitting down and writing that gives us the opportunity to look back on what we actually wrote. This often becomes the fertilizer for the next piece.

There is a practical fear—what if the farmer plants the field then it is struck by a drought? What if the writer sits down at the computer and the mind is struck by a drought? All that hard work gone to waste. “But blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. He will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7, 8. Stay in the word, live by faith, pray without ceasing—that is what allows our works to sprout, even when the land dries up.

To address the fear that our works will be unoriginal and will all look the same, consider a handful of wildflower seeds. They look similar—until you plant them. As they grow, they develop and become unique and individual. Once the writer starts writing, the story will develop. It isn’t until the seed is planted though that we see what it is destined to become.

So…how do I keep myself and my writing fresh as new articles are produced? I look back at the works which were created in those moments of un-inspiration; those moments that the Lord reigned upon my crops just because I showed up to plant them. “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:6.

Waiting for inspiration in order to write would be like a farmer refusing to turn on the sprinkler system until it rains. In order to write we must write. If this is what we genuinely feel called to do, let's make a plan of when to do it, show up, then do the work, even when we are not in the mood to do so. Plant the seeds and they will grow.

What is going to come first? The seed or the dirt?

Melanie Blogs about Purpose at: www.hungryforpurpose.com/blog