What my mother used to say (II)

"I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you." — 2 Timothy 1:5

My mother used to say that the garden will tell you when it is ready and you should not ask it before then.

She said this about tomatoes specifically but she meant it about everything. She meant it about children and about bread rising and about the weather and about people who were working through something hard. She meant it about me, though she did not say so, not in those words, not then.

I am thinking about this because the tomatoes are heavy and green and hard and I have been watching them every morning for two weeks and they have not changed color and I know, I know, I have been doing this for fifty years, I know that they will turn when they turn and not a day before, and still I go out there and look.

My mother would have said you are doing the same thing you did last year and the year before that and you will do it next year, which is standing over something that is not finished and asking it to be finished.

She was right. She was right about most things that involved waiting. She was a woman who could wait, which is different from a woman who was patient. Patience is a virtue. Waiting is a skill. My mother had the skill. She could shell a bowl of butter beans and not look at the clock and not think about what came next and not worry about whether the beans were going to run out before the bowl was full.

I am not as good at it as she was. I am standing over the tomatoes again this morning and they are not ready and I am going to come back tomorrow and do the same thing and that is all right because the garden will tell me when it is ready and I should not ask it before then.

Lord, let me wait the way she waited.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.