Do you have a garden?
My husband and I have tried our hand at growing various things for the last several years. We’ve had some successes and some failures. But with every failure, I can appreciate our God and His skill of making things grow that much more.
I couldn’t keep lavender alive, but the Lord sustains everything in creation. Companion planting? I’m only beginning to understand how it works. But our God weaves everything—the good and the heartbreaking—together with such intricacy and detail that our minds can’t begin to take it in. (For more on that, read the book of Job).
With each of my gardening failures (as well as other missteps in life), I’m reminded even more of the awesome nature of our God who cannot fail. And who teaches me through my failures.
So in a nutshell, that’s what this space is about—the growth of life orchestrated by our awe-inspiring God.
I’ll be prayerful about the things I post and do my best to only go where the Spirit leads me. And I ask that you also be prayerful while reading. We can meet in the comment sections of each post or privately through email and talk about it all some more!
A NOTE: Please be loving and respectful of any comments (from others or myself) that you may not agree with. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that none of us have every detail figured out. On this earth, we can only see in part.
But as Christians, we can all agree on this: Jesus is Lord, and none of us can live without His breath in our lungs. We are nothing apart from Him. We’re all on the same plane while He is high, exalted above it all. Yet, He humbled Himself to walk this earth and serve others — especially the broken — in perfect love.
Stay humble and treat one another as sisters. We can disagree without biting at one another. (See Galatians 5:15)
A Bit About Me
I fill the roles of wife and momma in a family of 6 (you can check out our family homeschooling blog here). My husband, Chris, is the exemplification of patience, and he is an immeasurable blessing to me. Our 4 kids are loud, hilarious, and full of personality (which is a contrast to my quiet, introverted self). We’re blessed to spend our days together; I homeschool our babes, and we both work from home.
I’m living a life I’ve dreamed of since I was a little girl.
And WOW, is it a challenge! But all the best things in life are challenging, and there’s so much joy in it.
I couldn’t say that I’ve always lived in joy, though.
Like you (and anyone else), I’ve faced pain, struggle, and heartache — sometimes of my own doing.
It’s a comfort to know that suffering wasn’t unknown by Jesus.
That He felt despair.
That My God came as a man to lay His life down for dust like me.
I could go into further detail about who I am and where I came from. Divorce, depression, sexual immorality… the list could go on. But it’s truly not important. What is important is this: I’m a wretch. You’re a wretch. God loves us in spite of that and gave up Himself as our salvation BECAUSE of that. My life really doesn’t matter in comparison with Him.
This site won’t be about me. It’ll be about God’s word.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus!
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
Why “Planting Vineyards”?
She considers a field and buys it;
Proverbs 31:16 (NKJV)
From her profits she plants a vineyard.
In a particularly dark period of my life, God led me to Proverbs 31 and used it to speak to me. One minute I was okay, and the next, I was sobbing uncontrollably while my babies napped peacefully beside me. At that point in my life, I hadn’t read my Bible much. But God used that day to draw me near and remind me of my first Love. I didn’t know it yet, but divorce was on the horizon. That day strengthened me and gave me a foundation—just a seed—that would carry me through.
Ever since, He’s continued to bring me back to that passage during different seasons of my life and used it to edify, correct, and encourage me.
The 16th verse never really struck me as anything important until almost a year after starting this blog. I used a different name for it at the time—A Life so Sweet. It was an okay name, but it felt like something was missing. Like that wasn’t really the final name.
Then while studying in Proverbs 31, the Holy Spirit made this verse come alive for me.
Without going into the meaning of every original Hebrew word, I’ll give you the abridged version. When it says “she considers” the field, in Hebrew, it’s more like she’s fixing her thought on the field to obtain it.
And the “field” isn’t just some piece of ground. I mean, it could be if she didn’t do anything with it. But she doesn’t let it lie dormant. She plants a vineyard — a place where fruit is grown for pressing into wine. In scripture, wine symbolizes the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and it also symbolizes the Holy Spirit.
That’s what this blog is to me. Getting it started wasn’t easy, and every step along the way has been rocky. There have been months, even years when I’ve put it away. There were times when I knew I couldn’t write because I wasn’t solid myself.
But I’ve fixed my thought on this space. This is a platform for me to point to Jesus and submit to His giftings in my life. This is my field.
And my hope for Planting Vineyards is to plant seeds in the hearts of my readers that lead to fruit and spiritual understanding in their own lives.
If it sounds like this is the place for you, stick around! You can follow the social media pages for Planting Vineyards with the buttons above, and you can join the email list by giving your name and email address here (I won’t pass it along to anyone and promise not to SPAM your inbox):
By joining this email list, you’ll get The Vine, my version of a newsletter with excerpts of the Word for your edification.
I’m glad you’re here!
Until next time,
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