Sow the Seeds and Watch for Weeds: How Tending to Marriage Is Much Like Tending to a Garden

My husband Kevin is the primary gardener in our family. He researches, designs, plants, tends, and harvests the garden in our backyard. It isn’t huge, but almost everything in it is living and growing. Now, his gardening efforts haven’t always been successful. In fact, it’s been a running joke in our family about how he (and I) tend to kill plants. We are really good at keeping children and animals alive (well, not fish), but we don’t seem to have the same knack for keeping flora alive. But, largely thanks to my husband’s persistence and ongoing education, most of the plant life around our home is now flourishing.

It’s taken a lot of effort and intentionality to get to this point, and the efforts and intentionality will have to continue as long as we want a thriving garden. We’ve learned that it’s the same with our marriage. (You knew I was going there, right?) If we don’t regularly and intentionally tend to our marriage, it won’t flourish either. Over the past 25 years, we’ve learned some foundational marriage truths that happen to coincide with the basic principles of gardening.

𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄.

Are there particular traits or characteristics that you want to be portrayed in your marriage? Are there goals that you want to reach together? In most cases, there are actual, tangible steps you can take to bring these ideas to fruition. Want to have regular date nights? Don’t just talk about it; schedule and plan them. Want to spend more time in focused conversation with each other? Put your phones away (like in another room… not just face-down on the table). Need help working through some challenging issues in your relationship? Don’t just wish it would happen; make an appointment with a counselor or an older couple who can mentor you.

There are plans you can make and things you can do to help bring about good fruit in your marriage. No, it’s not a guarantee that if you plan and even plant something, it will grow and thrive, but it’s almost a guarantee that if you neither plan nor plant anything, nothing will happen. Or maybe worse–something you didn’t plan to grow is what grows instead.

𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁.

Light, water, and soil are vitally important when it comes to gardening. Some plants have particular requirements for their environments, and if you ignore their needs, they will not survive. In the same way, our marriages grow stronger in certain environments than in others… [Click here to read the full article on Family Christian.]