Growing potatoes is a lot like growing faith; it is an exercise in trust and transformation, specifically in areas of my life that feel less than beautiful. You see, when you go to nursery and pick up a plant starter, for instance, a cucumber or some lettuce, it looks charming. There is a little bit of growth poking up out of the top of the planter. The sprouts get transferred to fresh garden soil, and we watch them grow.
Growing potatoes is different, and it is not very cute. Have you ever seen a potato that might have been left in the pantry for too long? It is a bit wrinkly, perhaps a little bit mushy, and it has little sprouts poking out of its skin. Well, that's the start of how to grow a potato. Essentially, if you take a potato that has passed its ripeness for eating and plant it in the ground, that potato grows more potatoes.
Often, we place a withered kind of ugly, almost rotting-looking potato in the ground. We take it and bury it in the dirt, pile soil on top of it, and hope that it grows.
The first year that I planted potatoes, I was convinced that none of them would grow. For months it seemed like nothing was growing. There was nothing to be seen above ground. There were no green sprouts. I had grown and harvested lettuce, cucumbers, and zucchini all in the same time frame and had seen nothing from the potatoes. I was convinced that every article I had read and every YouTube video I had seen about planting potatoes was wrong and that I had struck out on the potato front.
Then one day, I went out to the garden, and there was a tiny green sprout near the planted row of potatoes. At first, I didn't even know if it was a potato; I thought it might be a weed! I left it in the ground, hoping that it would grow. It was just a tiny little piece of green; I crossed my fingers, and I left it alone. Sure enough, week by week, that potato plant grew. The other potato plants started coming up shortly after that, and they grew.
Then came the payoff; I harvested the most delicious potatoes I had ever tasted. When I say they were delicious, they were the softest, the creamiest, the most beautiful potatoes you can imagine. Potatoes ended up being the favorite thing that I grew in the garden that year.
Here's why I'm telling you this:
This practice reminds me so much of the ways in our life that we act on faith, daily. We operate on faith; we take small seeds of hope, and we plant them in the ground. We cover them with dirt. We water them. And we hope that one day they produce. We hope that something springs forth out of the ground that is green and luscious.
Secondly, and probably the most profound to me personally, is that the way we sprout and plant potatoes is entirely different from other plants. Maybe that is why planting potatoes resonates with me. Planting potatoes is not like planting a cute corn kernel and having a beautiful corn stalk grow. It's not like planting a cute bean or a darling, tiny cucumber plant from the nursery. It is mushy and ugly. I can think of so many areas in my own life where I feel ugly and shriveled and mushy and yucky. I can think of areas of my life that are not cute. Sometimes I feel like that's all I have to offer; all I can bring to the table is my own messiness.
If you're losing hope, stay with me.
Here's the beautiful thing: when I take that messiness, plant it in the ground, I can offer it back to the world, transformed. I cover it with dirt. I press my hands to the earth, and I think to myself, "please grow, please grow." Here is this messy, shriveled, gross, kind of nasty part of my life, and I am hoping beyond hope that something beautiful can grow from it.
Then, I tend to it. I mound it over again with dirt, and I water it; I hope. It gets sunlight, and I hope. Time goes by, and I see nothing happening on the surface. I see absolutely nothing. But I hope.
What happens then? Do I keep watering? I don't have any other seeds to plant, I only have my shriveled potato to offer, so I keep watering it. I keep giving it sunlight. And I hope.
Somewhere along the way, without warning, a little green sprout appears. I don't even know if it's a weed or if it's a potato plant! But I look at this tiny green sprout, and I have hope. I have hope that something that I have offered to the world in messiness, in dirtiness, and in filth might just -- with a little bit of help, some water, some sunlight -- be producing something beautiful, given enough time.
This is the lived experience of the phrase, "suffering not transformed is transmitted." When I, in faith, take my difficulties, lay them down to plant, and grow them in a garden of life lessons, I can bring others to my table to enjoy the harvest of learning. In turn, I learn from them.
It is a walk of faith and learning. Faith in your footsteps, belief in the watering, and confidence in the sunlight -- day after day. Trust in that tiny little green sprout, a sprout that might have just been a weed but turned out to be a plant.
That's the experience of a walk of faith. Of trust and transformation.
Some days I'm harvesting potatoes, and that day is delicious. Some days I'm planting potatoes, and that looks a lot different, a lot dirtier. If today you feel like all you have to offer the world is a potato, a messy, sprouting, shriveled potato, that's okay. With enough care, soil, water, sunlight, a little bit of hope, and a sprinkle of faith, that potato will sprout something extraordinary. And it will be worth every bit of time that it took to get there.