When Adam and Eve were driven out of the Garden of Eden for eating the forbidden fruit, the Lord told Adam that the earth would be cursed for his sake.
The Lord didn’t conjure up consequences on the spot for the misbehaving like I did when my children misbehaved. The consequences of Adam’s choice were part of an eternal pattern of rules intricately woven with natural laws. If you set fire to a combustible substance, it’s going to burn. If you hurl an object into the air, it’s going to come down. The sun is going to brighten the sky in the morning, even if clouds hide it from view. Sunflowers will grow from sunflower seeds, and bullheads will grow on bullhead plants. There are eternal laws, and when laws are broken, consequences come as a natural result of the infraction. The earth was cursed because Adam broke an eternal law. The family of man lives in the aftermath of Adam’s choice.
I know because I planted a garden this spring and have been cursed with thistles, bindweeds, stink weeds, bullheads and every other weed you can imagine. The more I hoe, the more stubbornly they come. Bullheads are the worst. I recognize them for their lacy lime-green leaves and delicate yellow flowers. I used to think they were charming until I stepped on one with my bare feet. They have thorns that resemble the head of a horned bull. These vicious little thorns stick in your feet like thumbtacks. They get in your clothes and travel into the house to hide in the carpet. In the middle of the night, you find them. With a yowl of pain, you remember Adam’s curse and wonder what lesson is hiding in that cursed curse.
In our world, there are bullheads that look harmless, even attractive, but spikes hide beneath the beauty and surface in the most inopportune time to bring pain and sorrow into the lives of those who have planted and nurtured the thorns. To an unsuspecting person, illicit drugs and alcohol seem innocuous, but for those who suffer addiction, the thorns become agonizing and cannot be overcome without constant vigilance and pain.
Living together without marital vows – a growing epidemic – seems harmless. At first, the couple is like any married couple. They share finances, the home, food and love acting as a married couple, but there are vicious thorns hiding in the carpet of that kind of relationship. The couple unwittingly destroy the safety of the family. Children are born to these unions and are planted in a garden of confusion, and because there is no formal commitment, there are no laws to govern what happens to them. What happens when the couple splits? Who has jurisdiction over the children? What happens to the children when they become adults and decide to form relationships? The death of the traditional family is inevitable.
God designed the family as a garden of safety for children. Marriage is the wall of security around the children to help them navigate the complex issues they will face in the future, and there are laws to protect and guide if the wall breaks down.
Families can be gardens full of green, growing things. They stretch out with lush lawns and shadowed paths overhung with grapevines and ivy. Flowers leap from the ground in myriad shapes and colors. Roses play among the daisies, and sunflowers mingle with the baby’s breath. Carrots, beets, turnips, lettuce and parsnips grow in well-manicured rows, and the squash, melons and cucumbers balloon in rich color on trellises. The Garden of Eden, what a glorious vision! But interlaced with all the beauty, there are weeds, endless weeds that tangle around everything and choke out the peace and harmony of the place.
When my husband and I were raising our children, we chopped proverbial weeds every day. We taught each child to hoe, and some are hoeing in their own little gardens. We have learned that it’s easier to keep the weeds out if you hoe every day. You can’t let weeds stack up, or they take over and kill the whole garden. We learned that if you plant good things in your garden, weeds don’t have much place to grow. Plenty of water and sunshine is a must. We have made it a habit to read the scriptures daily to find out what weed killers and fertilizers work best. At times our garden resembled the Garden of Eden. Other times it looked like all we planted were bullheads, but the fruits of our labors were worth it. All our children know the difference between a weed and a vegetable plant. Sometimes they choose the weeds, to my dismay, but they know they are responsible for the outcome.
Hoeing in a family garden is a delicate process. A hoe is a tool, which can destroy as well as save; it depends on how you use it. Often, I hoed so fervently that I cut up the tender little plants. I would give my children a tongue lashing for misbehavior. I could see them wilt and die a little inside. The hoe was too sharp. It is better to handpick the weeds around new plants. It was better to explain softly to a child why a behavior wasn’t appropriate. It’s better to take a child’s hand and lead him or her out of the situation. Sometimes you must lead children out of the situation more times than you want to, but anything else kills the plant, and the weeds come back.
This summer, I had eight of my grandchildren staying with me. They ranged in age from 4 to 12. I learned a concept about hoeing weeds that helped them understand the difference between criticism and teaching. I have a tender-hearted 12 year old who is broken hearted if corrected. I was inspired to teach him the two-plus-two rule. I said, “When a teacher is trying to teach you a concept, would you rather do it your way or be corrected? For example, if the teacher tells you two plus two is four, would you like to learn the correct answer or go around saying the answer is five and look foolish to your friends?” He wanted to be corrected. “It is the same with criticism in doing a job. You need to treat it like a two-plus-two rule. You want someone to tell you if you are not doing it the best way so you can improve.” That idea resonated with him, and he was no longer offended if I told him he could do better. There were times I had to remind him that I was using the two-plus-two rule, but it helped.
Too many parents leave the gardening experience to chance. They expect the church, the school or the village to raise the child. The village may help, but the parent raises the child to be a gardener. If the village raises the child, the child might have more weeds than he or she can manage. The village definition of a weed is not necessarily the same as the parents’.
Music, activities, reunions and reading the scriptures together were the water and sunshine that filled our garden. Music was necessary in our family. Piano lessons, band in school and singing as a family were major priorities. No, the children didn’t always like the lessons. We didn’t always like the hoeing, but the garden is worth it. Each week, we met as family for family night. Sometimes we would play. Sometimes we would have a gospel discussion. Sometimes we’d watch a movie, but we were together. Family reunions with extended family were so important. It helped our children to see what a grown garden should look like, and it planted seeds for the future
The holy scriptures are vital in raising a family. By reading the stories and relating them to life, children can learn how to keep from planting bullheads that will cause pain later in life. The lessons are there in the form of parables, commandments and history. Even the story of Adam and Eve has significance today. We need only open our eyes to see the parallels.
