I planted half our garden Friday. Then we looked at a house Saturday morning and put in an offer Saturday night. While sadly the sellers didn’t take our offer (the Colorado housing market…), this short roller coaster ride sparked thoughts about the weird limbo of temporary housing and how much it mirrors other tensions we face.
Our current rental house is great. It was a godsend when we needed to find someplace quickly, and we’ve now lived here longer than any of our other houses except one.1 But we know we’re not going to be living here forever. We might renew our lease for another year or two, but by nature, renting denotes a certain state of uncertainty2 . It’s not our forever home.
Our fits and starts house hunting has made one thing clear - it’s harder to motivate myself to do things like plant a garden when I know there’s a possibility of us moving before I harvest it. What if I plant it and set reminders to water and weed, and finagle the baby and toddler and then I don’t get anything out of it? But then, what if I don’t plant it and we don’t move? What then? Will I be staring sadly at a plot of dirt in August, wishing I’d taken the risk in May?
While it seems to be a surface level question, it’s made me think about how we treat our time as “sojourners and exiles”3 . Do we plant gardens? Do we make things more beautiful? Or do we wait around, letting things deteriorate, because it’s not our real home?
I grew up with what I would say was a sort of functional gnosticism. While I’m not sure this was explicitly taught, I definitely caught the idea that my spiritual self was far more important than my bodily self. If I just kept my body over there, and my spiritual self over here, then I could be “good”, and I would stay removed from my “bad” body with all its issues. Just squash all the feelings down and dissociate. It didn’t really matter if I abused my body - it was just rental space anyway, right?4
We are prone to treat ourselves and others as expendable when we buy the lie that what we do with our physical reality doesn’t matter. It takes a certain mindset to believe that good stewardship matters, even if what you’re stewarding won’t last forever. It also takes a certain conviction to believe it’s worthwhile to make something better, even when you won’t see the benefit.
An experience with being on the owner’s end of a rental house drove this home in a rather pointed way. When we moved back from Wyoming to Colorado we attempted to sell our rental property so we could buy something else. Instead, we faced a nightmare scenario involving Covid-era tenancy laws and a renter who both trashed our house and refused to pay rent. It was truly befuddling to me that someone could treat someone else’s property so badly and feel no remorse, while actually making us out to be the bad guys. But sometimes I think about how we steward God’s creation - including ourselves - and it doesn’t seem quite so crazy after all. We’re all too ready to treat our current reality as if it doesn’t matter because something better is around the corner. We put off improving anything until we can be sure that it’s going to “count” (whatever that means). But if we don’t treat our current reality as if it is worth something, will we ever actually live in the future that we think is going to be so much better? The reality in front of us is our actual life. The bodies we live in are our actual selves.
We’re far from the first people to grapple with this dilemma of how to live in a temporary residence. Many years ago, God’s people were trying to figure out how to live as exiles, and these were their instructions:
“Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” Jeremiah 29:6-8 ESV
Then only a few verses later we have the oft quoted Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you future and a hope.”
What sticks out to me is that in order to complete the instructions in verses 6-8, these people would have needed the promise in verse 11. They would have needed to believe that the future was something worth sticking around for. Unless you have the promise of hope, you are apt to stop living. Instead of letting the Israelites succumb to languishing in exile, God gave them instructions for keeping the hope of a better land alive. Planting gardens, having children, getting married - these are all acts of hopeful defiance that declare life is still worth living, even if it’s not your forever home.
As I look around at our current culture, I would posit that more people are depressed than hopeful, having collapsed under the weight of an inability to imagine that things will get better. I fully acknowledge our present difficulties, but do we truly think things now are worse than ever? Are we in a more hopeless position than the Jews in exile? The Christians under Nero? Europe during the plague? As C.S. Lewis says, “do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation.”5
In the end, I believe our attitude towards stewardship says more about us than it does about the outcomes of our actions. Even if I have to abandon a garden, I will be better for having planted it. The discipline of nurturing life is a small rebellion against my natural tendency to cynicism. Like the Israelites in Babylon, our assignment is to bear witness to the hope of a better future, the reality of which enables us to do our work here.
A few things for you:
Listening: I just found this album by Porter’s Gate today. I’ve long been a fan of their work, but this collection is so timely. The line that got me? “When the care of my family takes all that I have, Christ within me/ When I’m worn and exhausted, ashamed that I’m mad, Christ defend me.” Written for all the weary workers among us.
Reading: I mentioned this on IG a while ago, but I recently finished a memoir by a Hollywood child actress Jeanette McCurdy, “I’m Glad my Mom Died”. It was well written and I’m still thinking about it for a variety of reasons. I also read an interesting article (h/t
) centered around Tara Westover (of “Educated” fame’s) family. Memories and perception remain so very complicated. It was an interesting look into the different perspectives from inside and outside a memoir.Trying: to keep all the dirty socks off the floor, finish planting the last bed in the garden and find some new summer recipes because I’m starving (thank you 14 lb, ravenous 3 month old) and very uninspired.
As a housekeeping note, I’ve decided to turn on the option for paid subscriptions. I still plan to keep all my content free, but if you value the work I put into this newsletter and would like to support it, I would be extremely appreciative. Please bear with me as I experiment with my limited tech knowledge and try to make Substack put buttons in the right places!
That’s a whopping 1 year and 3 months for anyone who cares. Our previous record is 3 1/2 years. 10 moves in (almost) 10 years of marriage. But who’s counting? (Me. I’m counting).
or a bonkers, insane housing market….
1 Peter 2:11
This is absolutely not true, and absolutely does not work. It will come out sideways.
This essay by C.S. Lewis contains some of the most eloquent thoughts about how to live when life feels temporary. His ending conclusion is profound. “Those who care for something else more than civilization are the only people by whom civilization is at all likely to be preserved. Those who want Heaven must have served Earth best. Those who love Man less than God do most for Man.”
Great work putting these thoughts together! Love this: "The reality in front of us is our actual life. The bodies we live in are our actual selves." Yes, yes, yes.
This really spoke to me! We've moved 5 times in 5 years of marriage, with another move coming up in a year. I also live in Colorado and just planted our garden in our raised beds last weekend...and I realized that next year we'll be here to plant, but probably not see the harvest. So do I plant at all?? It's a mind game for sure. Last year I had to abandon most of my harvest because of my sister's out-of-state wedding in October. It was hard, but I'm so glad I still planted.