You Were Made to Flourish
I loved my dad so much.
He was a farmer at heart, even though he never owned hundreds of acres or drove a shiny new tractor. His kingdom was a one-acre plot of land behind our century-old home, and in that sacred stretch of soil, he ruled with gentleness, diligence, and joy.
I was a daddy’s girl from the day I was born. If he was digging in the dirt, I was digging in the dirt. If he was weeding and whistling, I was his eager assistant. And when harvest time came, I delighted in the evenings we spent in our pink-and-green kitchen canning tomatoes and snapping beans. Those were holy moments to me.
But the greatest lesson my father ever taught me wasn’t about planting or pruning.
It was about flourishing.
A Garden Divided
One August morning, just days before harvest, Dad and I walked the rows together. The sun was soft, the air still cool, and the crops were nearly ready.
The night before, my sister and I had had a terrible argument. Words had flown like arrows. Angry, unnecessary words. And although my sister and I had wounded each other, we had also wounded my father. He valued peace in our home above everything.
As we walked that morning, we came upon a section of the garden that had been utterly ruined. Our neighbor’s dog had chosen one particular patch — about one by two feet — as his daily resting place. Spring and summer long, he had done his business there and lain on top of what should have been fertile ground.
That section was dry. Brown. Dead.
No harvest would come from it.
Right beside it, however, was one of the most fruitful portions of the entire garden. The leaves were green and vibrant. The soil had been tended. It had received the right amount of sunlight and rain. We had weeded and fertilized it faithfully.
Dad squatted down in the early morning light and pointed to the ruined patch.
“Carol,” he asked gently, “why is this part of our garden so dry and dead?”
I answered in my best ten-year-old voice, “Because that horrible dog ruined it, Daddy.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Now look at this part. Why is this section so beautiful?”
I replied, “Because we treated it right. We watered it. We fertilized it. We took care of it.”
And then my father took my hands in his rough, soil-stained ones and said something that has echoed in my heart for decades:
“Life is like that. If you treat something unkindly, it will die. But if you treat it with love and care, it will flourish.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
The Promise of Flourishing
Years later, that word flourish still stirs something deep within me. It is not a shallow, surface-level word. It is a word rich with promise and possibility.
Listen to the promise of Scripture:
“The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree,
He will grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Planted in the house of the LORD,
They will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still yield fruit in old age;
They shall be full of sap and very green,
To declare that the LORD is upright;
He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”
— Psalm 92:12–15 (NASB 1995)
My friend, God did not create you to wither.
He did not design you to shrivel under disappointment or dry up in discouragement. You were created to flourish — to be full of sap and very green. What a phrase!
Flourishing means receiving life from outside yourself, creating vitality within yourself, and producing blessing beyond yourself.
But here is what I want to tenderly remind you of today:
Flourishing is cultivated.
Just like that patch of garden.
What Are You Cultivating?
Two pieces of soil sat side by side in my father’s garden.
One was repeatedly exposed to filth.
The other was intentionally nourished.
One died.
The other thrived.
And here’s the hard but loving truth: we often allow our emotional lives to become like the ruined patch.
We rehearse offenses.
We relive arguments.
We nurse disappointments.
We replay painful conversations.
We allow the “dog” of resentment or bitterness to camp out on our hearts.
And then we wonder why nothing beautiful is growing.
But flourishing does not happen accidentally.
It happens when we intentionally tend the soil of our souls.
Planted in the Right Place
Psalm 92 tells us where flourishing begins:
“Planted in the house of the LORD…”
You cannot flourish disconnected from your Source.
In the podcast episode that accompanies this blog, I talk about hiding yourself in Christ (Colossians 3:3). When your life is hidden with Christ in God, you stop living from your wounds and start living from His wholeness.
You become more aware of His presence than your pain.
More conscious of His promises than your problems.
And when you are planted in Him, the Holy Spirit begins to water places that have long been dry.
Flourishing in Hard Seasons
Notice something beautiful about Psalm 92:
“They will still yield fruit in old age.”
Flourishing is not seasonal.
It is not reserved for young women with strong bodies and unbroken dreams. It is not limited to those in easy circumstances.
You can flourish when:
The diagnosis is frightening.
The marriage feels fragile.
The children are wandering.
The finances are tight.
The grief is fresh.
Flourishing is not the absence of hardship.
It is the presence of God in hardship.
Just as Esther chose to seek God in the face of annihilation (Esther 4), just as Peter was transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8), we too are invited into a different response.
We can choose what grows in our garden.
A Gentle Question
Let me ask you something, tenderly and pastorally:
What have you been watering lately?
Have you been watering fear?
Have you been fertilizing offense?
Have you been cultivating self-pity?
Or have you been saturating your heart in Scripture?
Have you been asking the Holy Spirit for power?
Have you been devoting yourself to prayer?
In the podcast, I shared that prayer is like an epidural for the soul. It doesn’t remove the process, but it changes your capacity to endure it. When you devote yourself to prayer (Acts 1:14), something shifts inside of you.
You become softer.
Kinder.
Stronger.
More stable.
You don’t merely act like Jesus — you begin to be like Him.
The Miracle of Green Again
The most hopeful truth I can offer you today is this:
Dead patches are not permanent.
God is in the restoration business.
If there is a section of your life that feels dry and brown — a relationship, an attitude, a dream — it is not beyond His touch.
He can remove what has defiled.
He can replenish what has been drained.
He can resurrect what appears lifeless.
When you:
Hide yourself in Christ,
Partner with Him in His Word,
Ask for the power of the Holy Spirit,
And devote yourself to prayer…
You will begin to see green again.
You will feel vitality where there was once only weariness.
And others will taste the fruit of what God has grown in you.
You Were Made for This
My father’s lesson in the garden was simple, but it has shaped the trajectory of my life:
What you tend will grow.
You were made to flourish.
Not to merely survive.
Not to barely endure.
Not to live brittle and defensive.
But to stand tall like a palm tree.
To grow strong like a cedar in Lebanon.
To be full of sap and very green.
And when you flourish, you declare something powerful to the watching world:
“The LORD is upright. He is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”
Your flourishing is a testimony.
If you’d like to go deeper into this message — into the five practical, biblical steps that lead to a flourishing life even in drought — I invite you to watch this month’s teaching episode of the Significant Women podcast.
Let’s continue tending the garden together.
Because my friend…
God has far more green in your future than you can imagine.
In this episode of the Significant Women Podcast, Carol McLeod shares a look at what it means to truly flourish. Using the picture of a garden, she reminds us that spiritual growth requires intentional care and that God desires for us to thrive and not to be worn down by discouragement. Carol talks about the importance of hiding ourselves in Christ, choosing how we respond to life’s challenges, and allowing God’s Word and prayer to bring real transformation. This encouraging teaching will point you toward the power of the Holy Spirit and the hope that even painful seasons can become places of new growth.