The Garden of My Soul

The following is written by my good friend Amanda Bagwell. I hope this story blesses you as much as it has blessed me.

“Jesus, I trust You.”  Those were the last, and almost only, words I prayed in the old chapel of our church, the night before I lost Gabriel.  The day before, I had received some really hard news from the fetal specialist. I had spent all night and most of the day, crying and praying.  By the time I got to the church that night, I was exhausted.  A dear friend had called me to see if I wanted to meet to pray together.  Seriously, these are the friends you want in life…those who will actively be the hands and feet of Jesus for you…those who will boldly engage in spiritual warfare on your behalf…those who will push pause on their busy lives, no matter how inconvenient, to literally get on their knees before God on your behalf.  I could not ask for better and I am humbled by the example of God’s love that surrounds me in my friends.  They are true treasures. I joined my friend in that holy space and cried as I listened to her beautiful prayers, storming heaven for the health and healing of me and my baby.  When she finished praying, I took a deep breath and got really honest with God for a minute.  I simply said, “God, I am all prayed out.  I’m all cried out.  I don’t know what else to say, but I feel like I just need to say out loud that Jesus, I trust You.”  

There’s a line in one of my favorite hymns that says, “Tune my heart to sing Thy grace.”  You see, when our hearts are tuned to Him, we understand that we don’t always understand.  We don’t get to turn our faith on and off, depending on our circumstances.  We don’t get to praise Him when things go well and then blame Him when things go wrong.  We are not called to be fair-weather friends of God, we are called to trust Him.  Proverbs 3:5 says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”  Lean not on your own understanding.  I absolutely do not understand what happened that late October day.  I don’t know why circumstances unfolded the way they did.  I don’t know why I had to bury my child.  What I do know is that my understanding is lacking.  

I never got to hold Gabriel alive.  I held his perfect little body after his soul had already left this earth.  That is hard stuff friends.  Really hard.  I won’t even qualify it with, “but I’ve learned so much,” or “but God is so good.”  Both of those things are true, but too often I think we try to move so quickly out of suffering and into “I’m fine,” that we fail to see God in the suffering.  He is there.  He was there for me that day and He has been there for me ever since.  He has held me, loved me, sat with me, carried me, led me, and even let me scream at Him.  

Real empathy is when someone sits with you in the hurt, in the mess, in the upset and holds that space for you to just feel.  It’s comforting to our fragile human hearts to know that someone is there with you when you’re going through something hard.  And guess what, God is the ultimate Comforter.  2 Corinthians 1:3-4 says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”  God is not sitting by idly in our suffering, He is there with us to bring comfort.  

One of the greatest comforts I received from the Lord, following this personal tragedy has been the grace of imaginative prayer.  I tend to be a very contemplative person.  I hear and experience God most through imaginative prayer and intimate worship.  When I am able to enter into a deep and meaningful time of prayer, there is a specific place I go to in my mind.  I like to call it the “garden of my soul,” which is a term I learned from a spiritual mentoring program I completed.  When I close my eyes, I can see it.  I can see Jesus there with me.  I can see Mary, Joseph, angels and saints. And since his passing, I can see my son Gabriel there as well.  They are all there, interceding with me and for me.          

A couple of weeks before the one-year anniversary of Gabriel’s death, I was impressed by God to sing and pray the worship song “The Blessing” over each one of my children in my prayer time. I closed my eyes and there in front of me, I lined each one of them up in my mind and heart, and sang those words as a prayer over their lives.  Fast forward to the weekend of that anniversary.  I was attending a retreat at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the timing of which I am convinced was orchestrated by God, just for me.  At one point that weekend, I was driving in my car alone, listening to worship music and the song “The Blessing” began to play. Immediately in my mind I was taken to the garden of my soul, but this time, I was not singing over my kids.  In an instant Gabriel was there and he was singing this song over me. I was completely overwhelmed with emotion! God impressed upon my heart in that moment that Gabriel is a gift to me and my family. He is our personal intercessor in heaven, continually praying for God’s love and mercy and grace in our lives. My husband Jansen and I fully entrusted our son and his life to God, and I felt as if the Lord said to me that in honor of our faithfulness and in honor of Gabriel, every year, he would give me a gift on the anniversary of his death.  I literally and physically felt the “peace that passes all understanding” overwhelm me.

The next day, on the one-year anniversary of Gabriel’s birth and passing, God gave me that gift.  I was at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament for the retreat, but I had snuck away from the retreat activities for some personal prayer.  The day Gabriel died, we actually had three priests present at the hospital (that’s a miraculous story for another time) and they were able to be with my husband and baptize Gabriel, while I was still in surgery.  Because I wasn’t able to be present, Jansen asked one of the priests to video it on his phone.  The timestamp on the video of him being baptized started at 4:51 PM, so I knew I wanted to be alone in prayer at that time. 

Later that evening, back at the retreat, the main speaker led us through a time of imaginative prayer.  (I mean seriously! There may have been around one hundred people there, but I am still convinced this weekend was curated by my Heavenly Father, just for me.)  She led us to visualize something that we were having trouble with, associate it with a negative image and give it a name.  I was immediately drawn back to the garden of my soul, but instead of seeing myself in my normal “spot,” I saw a wilted, rotting flower…in my place, in my garden, in my soul.  Right away, I knew its name. It was “unworthy.”  Unworthiness is something I struggle with in different ways, for different reasons, and I know it is a direct attack from the enemy, on the very essence of my being, because my literal name, Amanda, means “beloved, worthy of love.”  The retreat leader then guided us to ask the Holy Spirit to replace the picture with something positive, something from Him.    

When I did this, I saw flowers grow up in that spot where the wilted, rotting flower had been. It was a bunch of white tulips. I already knew that white tulips mean “worthiness,” so honestly, I kind of expected that, and I was beginning to rationalize away this spiritual experience. But then, suddenly, a different flower began to grow up in the center of them.  It was a type of white dahlia, and it was stunning!  As the flower was rising up in my prayer, all of a sudden, I saw Gabriel there and he handed me another one of these flowers.  Now, flowers and their meanings are important to me.  In that garden of my soul, there are many flowers, and they all have a special meaning.  I knew as he was handing it to me, that this was “his” flower.  Gabriel was giving me “his” flower, the gift of himself, to me.  I remembered what the Lord had said about giving me a gift and I knew this was it.  And to top it off, I had actually been given this very flower, a real one, earlier in the evening.  As people were clearing the centerpieces off of the dinner tables, some ladies insisted that I take it, so I did.  Not only did I now have this beautiful spiritual “gift,” but God had orchestrated a way to give it to me in the physical realm as well!    

Me being me, of course when we were done, I had to look into the meaning of dahlias, and here’s what I found: 

Generally, the significance of dahlia flowers is positive. Perhaps the most common of all is 1) finding inner strength…Other meanings of dahlias are 2) remaining graceful and 3) standing out from the crowd, since their beauty and elegance is undeniable. That being the case, these flowers make the best gift for someone you admire or perceive as a strong person.

How beautiful! In my prayer, Gabriel gave me this flower as a gift. Tears began to flow.  Tears of joy, tears of healing.  But then there was more…

Dahlia flowers symbolize a lasting bond and lifelong commitment between two people…Like other white flowers, white dahlia flowers’ meaning is associated with pureness and innocence.

My heart was overwhelmed with this symbol of the lasting bond between me and my son in heaven, this innocent little baby.  And still, there was more…

In biblical texts, the Dahlia is believed to have been derived from the Hebrew word delaya and its variant delayahu which means Yahweh has drawn (near), (and it is the word used) following the sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham…the Hebrew derivative of dahlia, delayu, is mentioned twenty-three times, including this time following of story when Abraham sacrificed his son Isaac to re-establish the good relationship between God and His people.

I couldn’t believe what I was reading, so I continued diving into the meanings…

In 19th century medicine, the dahlia was also instrumental as it was the first organic source of insulin, hence, benchmarking future breakthroughs in treating diabetes.

Ok, so this was eerily specific.  At that time, I was working with a wholistic doctor on healing my body at the cellular level.  After the major trauma and surgery I had endured, I had (and still have) a lot of work to do.  Most of this work has to do with the physical manifestations of emotional roots.  The wholistic doctor had picked up on that feeling of “unworthiness” I mentioned before. We discussed it and she told me that one of the physical illnesses tied to that emotion is…you guessed it…diabetes.  I had gestational diabetes with Gabriel, and all of my other kids except my first, so this spoke directly to my heart.    

And then there was this…

Ultimately, the first and most distinct meaning of the dahlia flower is to remain graceful in the midst of life challenges.  It is also a beautiful going away gift.

I was seriously undone.  A going away gift?  Wow!

Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s important for me to learn how to listen to God in the way He wants to speak to me.  We are spiritual beings.  If I were to look and listen only with my physical senses and rational mind, I would be missing out on some of the most tremendous blessings and incredible healings I’ve experienced.  I’m blessed to have learned how to “Tune my heart to sing (His) grace” because from hearing and receiving His grace, as the song goes on to say, “Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise.”  I’m grateful to God for this gift and I will forever give Him all of the praise and glory for the healing I have already received and continue to receive.  My prayer is that it can be a testimony for others to seek Him in suffering, know His voice and receive His love.