I have always thought that pruning the soul is like cutting away dead branches in the heart’s garden—those twisted limbs, heavy with lies and betrayal, the ones that choke the light, the truth. I once believed in people the way the morning believes in the sun. But when they let me down, when they tore at my roots with their lies, I grew cold and untrusting.
You see, trust is fragile, and once broken, it feels like no amount of water can coax it to bloom again. But God… oh, God. I don’t know how to explain it, but God feels different. I don’t have to trust the world to trust Him. I can be betrayed by everyone I know, yet still, I kneel, hands in the soil, eyes to the sky, trusting that somehow, in this silent, invisible way, He is tending to the part of me that still believes in light.
It’s terrifying, really, to trust in something unseen, something that isn’t flesh, that doesn’t breathe deceit into your ear when your back is turned. But maybe that’s the gift—the only thing I’ve been given after all the pruning, after all the cutting away. Hope. A small, sharp thing, stubborn in its survival, blooming in the barren corners of my soul. God doesn’t lie. At least, I’ve never heard Him whisper anything but the truth, though sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes it’s buried under the wreckage of my doubt.
I don’t have to trust in people to trust in Him. Maybe that’s the lesson of this ruthless pruning: to let go of what cannot hold my soul, and to turn, scarred but still standing, toward the one who sees me as more than a broken thing. I’m learning, slowly, painfully, that God is the only gardener who knows how to make even the dead things grow again.
B 🤍
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