My wife and I recently spent three days on Middle Caicos, a remote island with the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Caribbean Sea on the other. Few people live on this dot on the map. To get there, we had to take a plane to the tourist island, ride a ferry around several more islands to North Caicos, rent a Jeep, circumnavigate that island, and then drive across a couple rocky causeways on one of the few paved roads on Middle Caicos.
During most of our time in the Jeep, shrubs and small trees stood as walls straight up from the edge of the bleached asphalt. As we stood atop hills, the landscape rolled lush all the way to the water.
My wife wondered aloud why we didn’t see gardens and fields here. “It’s too rocky,” I replied.
Knowing I’m neither a botanist nor a Caribbean expert, she later asked a charming native the same question. The jolly taxi driver confirmed my guess but expanded it to include the realities of pervasive sandstone and limestone. He pointed out that the plant on their flag was a cactus.
He noted that locals grow bananas, mangos, and avocados in their yards but only enough to supplement their groceries. He further explained that fishing was the pre-tourism industry of this archipelago, because the land wouldn’t support substantial crops. Apparently, this reality caused the exodus of the British long ago after they had emigrated here with their slaves and their hopes of lucrative cotton plantations.
From a distance, the rolling greenery looks like an unkept, ancient garden of Deism’s great clockmaker. This paradise with 350 days of sunshine per year sustains plenty of plant life. It just doesn’t bear much fruit. It’s all alive, just not productive.
Frankly, it’s hard to wrap your head around this paradox—especially when you’re standing next to the manicured hedges and flowing bougainvillea that line resort pathways and pool decks.
I’ve seen that paradox somewhere else, though: in myself.
At times in my life, my life looks active and alive. Tourists visiting my life would see life and maybe even evidence of growth but no significant fruit. There are moments of beauty, of put-togetherness. With social media assumptions, the motion blur of my life can look green.
Candidly, though—more than I’d like to admit—there is a lot of fruitless wildness in me. I use my leaves to cover brittle branches of selfishness, insecurity, and indulgence. While others are planted in much rockier ground, I pretend I face the same challenges.
Thankfully, God didn’t “set it, and forget it.” He doesn’t leave me gnarled, matted, and disheveled, like the wilderness of the Caicos islands. Unlike Deism’s motion-setter, he does tend to the gardens of each of our souls, even mine. He guides the pruning of difficult conversations with authentic friends. He shapes me along his path. When I’m too far away, he uproots me to transplant me there.
His work isn’t to make me look healthy but to be healthy. His goal isn’t for me to survive the elements or even just to grow. His intent is for me to thrive, to reach my full potential—to bring beauty into the lives of others and to bear fruit he can share.
When I open myself to his uncomfortable and even painful process, I benefit. So do others: both the transient tourists and the indigenous locals.
God’s gardening doesn’t look like a day at the beach, but it gives me glimpses of that destiny.
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All photos shot on my iPhone.
Krista Shuman
Awesome. Very thoughtful and insightful post. Thank you for sharing and holding up the mirror for me to examine myself.