I vividly remember sitting on my couch holding my then six-year-old daughter as she fell asleep, watching my nine-year-old son play with his Legos on the living room floor on a Sunday afternoon, coffee growing cold on the coffee table, thinking about how chaotic my life had become. Homework still to be done. A work week to plan for. A kitchen full of dishes and trash to clean up.
In that moment, I felt lost in a wilderness of my own making, caught between the demands of providing for my family and actually being present with them. Between wanting to lead my children to Christ and barely finding time to open my own Bible.
Maybe you know this feeling too.
But here’s what I’ve learned on this journey: there’s a path through the wilderness, and it runs through three gardens that frame the entire story of Scripture and our lives.
Vision: Your Stretch Dream (God’s Call)
“The Bible opens with a garden. It closes with a garden. The first is the Paradise that was lost. The last is paradise regained.” – John Henry Jowett
The story begins in Eden, where God walked with his people in perfect fellowship. It ends in Revelation 22 with a vision of the new Jerusalem, where “the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.” (Revelation 22:1)
Between the garden we lost and the garden we’re promised lies your calling, your vocation.
For me, that calling crystallized during those overwhelming mornings. God was inviting me into a stretch dream that felt impossibly big: to become known as the Mister Rogers for families. To create a space where parents like you could find encouragement, wisdom, and hope for the daily battles we all face.
This wasn’t just about career ambition. This was about answering God’s call to serve, to help families like mine (and yours) find their way back to the garden, back to that place of walking closely with the Creator.
Your stretch dream might look different than mine. Maybe it’s raising children who know Jesus in a culture that’s forgotten Him. Maybe it’s building a business that reflects kingdom values. Maybe it’s creating a home that feels like a refuge in a fractured world.
Whatever it is, it’s too big to accomplish in your own strength. And that’s exactly the point.
The question isn’t whether you have a vision. It’s whether your vision requires God’s help to achieve. If it doesn’t, you may be dreaming too small.
Process: The MindWolves Process (God’s Will)
Here’s the hard truth I had to learn: having a God-sized vision isn’t enough.
Between Eden and the new Jerusalem stands a third garden, Gethsemane. And it’s through “the unspeakable bitterness and desolation of Gethsemane that we find again the glorious garden through which flows ‘the river of the water of life.’” – John Henry Jowett
Without Gethsemane, there is no new Jerusalem. Without the mysterious and unfathomable night of surrender, there is no blessed sunrise of eternal hope.
This is where God’s will meets our daily reality. This is where we discover that God’s will for us isn’t primarily about what we do. It’s about who we become.
Your purpose is a character purpose. It’s the posture of your heart when nobody’s watching. It’s who you’re becoming as you walk through your own Gethsemane moments. Those times when following Christ costs you something, when saying yes to God means saying no to something else.
My purpose is to encourage families to feed their good wolf and build their foundation on God’s Word. That’s the “why” behind everything I do. It leverages my spiritual gifts of encouragement, discernment, and prophecy.
But here’s what I’ve discovered: I can’t lead my family somewhere I’m not willing to go myself.
If I want my children to treasure Scripture, I need to be in God’s Word daily, not out of guilt or obligation, but because it’s the only way to survive the journey between gardens. The only way to know God’s will is to spend time with the One whose will it is.
This is the process. Not a formula or a hack, but a daily decision to meet with God before the chaos begins. To let His Word shape your heart before the world tries to shape your day.
Some mornings it’s just five minutes. Other mornings, it’s longer. But every morning, it’s a choice to remember Gethsemane, to remember that “you are not your own; you were bought at a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
That remembrance keeps my spirit humble. It fills my heart with love for the One whose I am, and whom I ought to serve.
Love: The Glue (Neighborly Love = Love God, Love People)
Vision without process is just a dream. Process without vision is just drudgery.
But here’s the secret that holds it all together: love.
Without love, Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 13, we are just “a clanging cymbal.” All our striving, all our stretch dreams, all our daily disciplines amount to nothing if they’re not rooted in love for God and love for people.
This is what it means to be a neighbor, not just to the person next door, but to everyone God places in your path. Your spouse who’s also exhausted. Your children who need more than you feel you have to give. Your coworker who’s struggling. The stranger at the grocery store.
Being a neighbor enables and empowers me with the help of the Holy Spirit in my daily walk. It’s what transforms my morning time in God’s Word from a checkbox into a lifeline. Because when I encounter Christ in Scripture, His love overflows into every relationship, every responsibility, every moment of my day.
Love is the difference between having a vision and becoming someone worth following. It’s the difference between completing tasks and transforming lives.
The Journey Home
Can we forget Gethsemane? Yes, we can. And in the forgetfulness, we lose the sacred awe of our redemption. We miss the real glory of paradise regained.
But we can also remember. We can choose to walk through our own gardens with intention:
- Remembering Eden by casting a vision big enough to require God’s help
- Remembering Gethsemane by surrendering daily to God’s will through His Word
- Remembering the New Jerusalem by loving God and loving people along the way
The journey has been costly. The path between gardens is difficult. The demands of work and family feel overwhelming some days.
Yet through it all, God’s purposes triumph. His grace, His goodness, His Gethsemane have made it possible for us to dwell in the garden of God for eternity. A garden where there is no curse or darkness, only face-to-face fellowship with the Creator.
Forgetting this gift is unimaginable; fully understanding it, impossible. But spending today in gratitude is unparalleled.
So tomorrow morning, when the coffee grows cold and the backpacks still aren’t zipped and the emails are already piling up, I hope you’ll remember: you’re not lost in a wilderness. You’re on a journey through three gardens, and God is walking with you every step of the way.
The question is: will you make time to walk with Him?
What’s one small step you can take this week to build a daily habit of spending time in God’s Word? I’d love to hear your story in the comments below.
MindWolves 