Why is My Garden My Life?

  Why is my garden my life?  Let me share with you why gardening has become a passion and how it has changed my life forever.  In August 2009, I started on the wonderful adventure as a resource teacher at a charter school in Salem, Utah.  I had little background in this field and was unaware of the stressful, yet rewarding life I was entering.  The more I taught the more I got lost in my work.  I loved teaching and working with the children, but I was burying myself in my work and I wasn't taking care of myself.  A darkness was beginning to take over my life.  I began to feel like I was drowning on the inside.
  In March 2010, I was seriously considering going to see a councilor because I was feeling very emotionally unstable.  As I thought and prayed about going, the thought that kept coming to me was that I needed to plant a garden.  Now, one may ask how on earth can a garden do the same thing as a councilor?  I don't know the answer to that question and for some people, it might not, but for me, I knew I needed to follow the prompting I was getting.
  Having a garden was not a new idea to me.  While I was growing up, my parents had always had a garden.  I remember countless hours spent weeding and harvesting, watering and weeding some more.  As a child, I didn't love weeding, but I did love eating the fresh veggies that came from the garden.  I learned to work hard in my parent's garden.  I had always wanted a garden of my own, but I never put forth the effort into creating it.  Now that I was having the prompting to plant a garden, I started surveying the landscape of my parent's acreage for a place I could call my own.  I found a little spot of land that was covered in weeds.  It looked something like this.

   (The weeds I had to clear were at least as thick as the weeds behind the fence and in the picture below.)

  Like I said before, I was not fond of weeding, but I knew that if I wanted a garden, I was going to have to work at it.  I asked my parents if it would be ok if I transformed the weed patch into a garden and they said yes.  Yeah for me.  I had a spot :) As I started to weed, something started to happen to me.  I noticed that I wasn't as depressed anymore.  I noticed that I was more positive about myself.  I noticed that I could face the stress at work without wanting to crawl into a hole and disappear.  Something beautiful was replacing the darkness that had surrounded me.  I had something to look forward to when I came home from work.  I remember I could hardly wait to leave work so I could come home and work in my garden.  It took about a week to clear all of the weeds, thanks to the help of my awesome family.  At the end of the week, I realized that I was starting to heel from the inside out.  
  I can't fully explain the transformation I was going through, because it was just little realizations here and there.  All I know is that as I have continued to work in my garden these last 2 1/2 years, my life has been transformed into something far more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.  Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us and it is wonderful and amazing to see all the little miracles that he gives us.  Back in 2010, I never would have ever guessed that my garden would be the miracle that would help me past my darkness and toward a beautiful new beginning.  As I look back on this experience now, I realize that Heavenly Father is very mindful of each of us and our every need.  He is there for us.  As I worked in my garden, I had a lot of time to think and I learned some of the most beautiful lessons life has to offer from My Garden.