Empty Field No More

It’s an empty field.

It seems like a few months ago it was lush and green. Your taste buds would wake up as you walked by it and smelled the vegetables that were growing.

I get that way in the spring. When the dirt is first turned and the fresh smell surfaces.

When hope is new.

When I have the choices right in front of me. How many rows to plow? Do I plant one vegetable or thirty vegetables? Or maybe I’ll let the field grow naturally and let it rest this year ?

Sometimes, when the summers get hot and the rain forgets to fall, or when the harvest is small, or when, like now, the fields are empty, I let those circumstances consume me and I forget I always have choices.

It’s my life and I decide what I will or will not plant. Will I plant love or forgiveness or hope or grace this year? Will I let someone or something take away what I plant or maybe convince me to not plant at all?

Will I let hate or unforgiveness grow like weeds and take over my field? Will I give up all hope as my world crashes around me? Will I let the darkness overcome my light?

Sometimes, when I look out at the empty field I see exactly that, an empty field. Nothing growing , dark times and death all around me.

And I can let that take over if I choose to do so. I can sigh and close the curtains and choose not to look out the window. Choose to not see the empty field.

But that doesn’t make it go away. It’s still there. And if I let it, it will always be there.

And there have been times in my life when that is exactly what I did. I chose to see the empty field instead of a field waiting for life to begin.

I’ve lost time, I’ve lost hope and I’ve lost me.

But as I’ve become older, and maybe matured some, I see the empty field for what it is, in the season it is in. A season of potential. A season of rest. A season to figure out what’s next.

It’s not a season of despair or hopelessness anymore. A season that I know, no matter what is happening in my life right now, I get to choose what’s next.

It’s a season of anticipation. A season of hope. A season to appreciate the present and look forward to the future. A season away from seeds being planted and to rest, but knowing the seeds are still there. Just waiting to mature and become what they are meant to be.

Maybe those seeds will grow. Maybe, if given enough light and rain and love, there will be a bountiful harvest.

And maybe no matter what I do, they won’t grow at all.

And I’ve come to a place in my life of acceptance. I’ve learned that either the seeds will grow or the seeds will not. And it’s okay either way.

I’m learning to be grateful in seasons of life and seasons of death. In seasons of love and seasons of lost love. I’m choosing to be grateful for what is and what was, and what will be.

I’m choosing to forgive myself for my past, for moments when I slip, when I may see an empty field again. For not seeing the empty field for more than what it is, potential.

I’m choosing to set boundaries and not let those boundaries be crossed again. Yes, there is grace and forgiveness, but no, I will not tolerate what I have tolerated in the past.

Because a field full of love or an empty field doesn’t change who I am. It doesn’t change what I know. That I am loved and that I am love. That I am forgiven and that I can forgive. That I have hope, that I am that hope, even when others do not see it.

I will choose to see the light. I will choose to love. I will choose to be who I am.

There’s not an empty field out there that I will see as an empty field anymore.

For where there is nothing, there’s always something right below the surface waiting to burst through.

And that’s how I will choose to live.