Because that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last week.

You see, I’ve been wanting to start a garden for years now, and every year I get cold feet and don’t end up doing it because I overwhelm myself by thinking through all the possibilities and that I have to do everything in order to make anything worthwhile.

This year, I decide that instead of a garden, I would plant a strawberry patch. My mom ordered me 50 tiny strawberry plants from Nourse Farms, and I used my birthday money from my mother-in-law to buy fencing for my garden. Well, my husband bought it. He also dug out our hill to create a space for my garden, and he also planted more than half of the strawberry plants himself. More on that later.

My strawberry plants arrived before my garden was done, and because they come in bundles (rather than planted in individual pots), it’s important to plant them ASAP, although they can be refrigerated for a few days if necessary. That’s when I started praying for them, as my husband continued to work on the garden plot, even in the rain (That man loves me. He really does!).

Then, the day came, and I headed out to plant my strawberries. Unfortunately, it wasn’t log before I realized that our ground soil was one part soil, nine parts rock. Because we had already waited six days since the strawberries had arrived, and because I wouldn’t have time to plant them the next day, and because we live in the boonies with no Lowe’s or Wal-Mart in sight, I decided that I was just going to have to plant them in the rocky ground anyway.

And when it started to rain again and I had only planted 20 of those 50 plants in more than an hour-and-a-half, I was about ready to throw in the towel. My wonderful husband, realizing how hard I was working to dig the holes in the rocky ground (it was my fault for not telling him right away!) headed back out in the rain and used a pick axe to dig the holes. He planted the other 30 in just under an hour.

And still I kept praying.

The way I see it, praying for strawberry plants is a little bit different than, say, praying that the Redskins win a game. Maybe I’m just convincing myself that it’s different, but for now that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

You see, I’m not praying that they’ll flourish so that I can brag about my mad gardening skills. I’m not even praying they’ll flourish just to save us money on our favorite summer fruit.

I’m praying that they’ll flourish because this is my first feeble attempt to grow a garden as a way to help provide healthy food for my family and as a way to teach my girls to love God’s creation and to be able to provide for their families one day. I think my motives are pure, and I do believe that flourishing strawberry plants at this point will give glory to the One who deserves the glory, and so each time I go out to water those tiny little plants – which, by the way, are getting greener and greener by the day – I continue to pray that they would flourish in my garden and that God would somehow step in and fill the gap where my gardening skills end. I pray that because of Him, my garden would produce abundantly anyway.

Is that weird?