Tend the New Growth

I’ve always liked typewriters. When I was growing up on Hampshire Drive, we had a vintage Underwood typewriter in our basement. Around the same time that I fell head-over-heels in love with books, I decided that I should be a writer so I could weave tapestries of words like the authors I was fangirling over. I began my first novel. Entitled Benjamin, Franklin & Me, it remains my only novel. And was kind of a snore. But I enjoyed the productive buzz the clacking of the typewriter keys gave me, and the satisfying sense of progress being made with every ding of the carriage return.

I had developed a yen for planting words on paper.

My next typewriter was the Smith-Corona electric passed down from my sisters. Requiring less vigor to operate, it provided a reassuring hum … a kind of underlying soundtrack … to my academic writing for four years. I began my college experience with the sensible intention of studying business. I graduated with the better-fitting-yet-less-marketable English Literature & Writing degree, and progressed from typewriters to computers in my post-college employment in public relations.

Fast-forward 10 years. I discovered another typewriter in a basement, this time at our family cabin. It was a 1950s-ish Royal manual typewriter that had belonged to a friend of my parents. As I lifted the snug dust cover to check it out, I was amazed to find a letter waiting there. My dad had evidently decided to see how well the thing worked, and left the letter as a surprise for someone to find. Delighted by his whimsical gesture, I inserted another sheet of paper and offered him a reply, providing a brief description of my life then as a mom of two young children. I have the typewriter now, with my dad’s letter rolled up for all to enjoy.

My Samsung laptop keyboard has taken the place of the typewriters in my life, and I find that I still enjoy the rhythm and flow of pouring words through my fingers on a keyboard. I kind of miss the thumping announcement of the sentence marching across the page with every keystroke, as the carriage inches by… word by word. But I don’t miss using white-out.

I recently came across another typewriter that warmed my heart. An image of a typewriter with flowers growing where paper ought to bloom, it spoke to me. I reached out to a Hope*Writers artist named Micah Lambert to change out the words on the image so it could say even more.

Several years ago, I remember prayer-whining to God about how little time I had to spend on my knees in my garden. I wasn’t especially good at growing things, but I found the weeding process satisfying, soothing, and strangely meditative. The subdued lavenders and mossy greens, the feathery textures of the foliage, and the heady mixture of scents all fed my desire for beauty. I lamented that I was missing out on prime time in the dirt because I had other things I had to do.

Typed on my heart, almost immediately, were the words tend the new growth… like an Instant Message. I saw the words even as I felt their meaning sink in. It was like my own personal Jeremiah 31:33 moment, as God put words in my mind and wrote them on my heart.

As a newly divorced woman who had embarked on the sea of full-time employment for the first time in two decades, the words pierced me and I received them gratefully as God’s message to me for this season. He was beckoning me to be mindful of what was happening within.

And he was showing me that I was the garden.

As I ponder those words today, the intimacy and tenderness of His meeting me in that moment warms me still … like the joy I felt when I discovered that quirky message left by my dad under the dust cover of the Royal typewriter. If you would like a copy, download Micah’s print, below. I hope it inspires you as you tend your new growth.

…I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts…

Jeremiah 31:33

Click to access tend-the-new-growth.pdf