We have to keep watering our dirt, even when the growth seems absent. Even if it feels silly. I assure you that I felt silly every time I stepped outside my house to do gardening or yard work. Several of my neighbors are retired and, between their time and experience, have perfect lawns and gardens.

“I have to go water my flowerbeds,” I said a few weeks ago.

Flowerbeds—not flowers. There were no flowers yet, but “I have to go water my flowerbeds” sounded much better than “I have to go water my dirt.”

But you know what you have to do to get flowers and, later, fruit?

Water dirt. Often. For weeks.

A lot of life feels like watering dirt. We paint and scrub and rearrange, leaving chaos in our wake, and only after years of effort does our house become a home. We continue to get coffee with someone over and over before an awkward acquaintanceship becomes a comfortable friendship. We battle the same sins day in and day out, perhaps not seeing how far we have come until some pivotal moment forces us to look at the long uphill road behind us.

Here’s a personal example: Writers will write every day with only a publication here and there. The best days are, more often than not, simply those when we write more words than we delete.

In our culture of immediacy, we can’t stand “watering dirt.” We want results and we want them now. We go to church sporadically and become cynical: why it hasn’t changed our lives yet? We eat at home once or twice and are shocked to see that our bank account hasn’t boomed.

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