Deep Thoughts On Rogue Spaghetti Squash

A few weeks back I noticed a healthy crop of volunteer spaghetti squash in the chicken run. After we lost our flock last year, I never turned over the run compost. I left it to fallow and wouldn't you know it, about 200 plants decided to grow themselves. Those persistent volunteers revealed a BIG secret today. Some of these squash are watermelons. And not just any watermelon...

Today while mulling over a long “to do list”, I heard the Holy Spirit whisper, “The list can wait. Go outside, seek me, enjoy my creation”. So I did. I fiddled around the garden, pulled a few weeds, pushed out the encroaching worrisome thoughts and found myself staring at these spaghetti squash and wondering why these little yellow flecks were on some leaves and not others. Then my brain remembered (thanks, tumor!) that those little yellow dots weren’t a sign of disease but rather, the rare and fantastic markings of the constellation watermelon. 

You see this watermelon has a history, it’s an early American heirloom. It was also the very first watermelon grown by a volunteer at Common Ground Community Garden in 2015. The next year a volunteer popped up at the garden and I let it grow- that single plant produced over 250lbs of watermelon for the North Texas Food Bank out of the backyard of Church of the Resurrection. Some of them even grew into the fall and ended up being fed to a few of my hens as reward for all the free fertilizer they provide. And now, the offspring of that watermelon is growing rapidly in my own backyard, hidden amongst squash and thriving despite all odds.

God knew this hidden gem was growing right under my nose and He didn’t let me busy myself to the point of missing this sweet whisper. These watermelon are THIRD GENERATION plants!! These are seeds that have true grit- they’ve survived the barren seasons, the chaos, the disconnect. In my misunderstanding of their identity, I was mistakenly training them to climb, they are meant to crawl and sprawl. My husband, worried that these climbing vines would disrupt his grass had to be informed: the watermelon doesn’t send more roots into the ground. It only needs the primary root, deeply planted to flourish. Every vine it sends out is sustained by that primary root. So too in the spiritual places of the soul. We MUST develop our roots in the Lord before we can be sent out to multiply and prosper. We cannot pour our life into others without first understanding the everlasting life and abundance we have in Jesus Christ.

Go out dear friends and find your watermelon! That secret whisper the Lord is calling over you to stay still and seek Him. We all have a watermelon in our lives, something we ignore but shouldn’t. Something waiting and willing to restore and renew us if only we made the time to be still and notice it.

Peace & Carrots,

V


"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God."

Ephesians 3:14-19