The Garden vs. the Crop Field: Understanding When God Brings the Rain
Let me paint a picture that has stayed with me, one God keeps bringing back to my spirit in this season.
Imagine a small garden in your backyard. A few tomato plants. Maybe herbs lining the edge. A flower or two trying to survive the heat. Every morning, you step outside with your watering pail. You pour just enough water, check the soil with your fingers, pull a weed here and there. You’re hands-on. You’re in control. If something starts to wilt, you fix it. If it grows, you take credit. There’s comfort in that kind of control.
That’s how most of us live when life feels manageable.
Now imagine something entirely different.
Picture a farmer standing at the edge of a massive crop field. Hundreds of acres stretch out before him. Rows upon rows of corn, wheat, soybeans bending with the wind. The scale is overwhelming. The farmer has done the work planted the seeds, prepared the soil, cleared the land but now the field is far beyond his ability to manage.
Can you imagine that farmer trying to water all of that with a single bucket?
Row by row. Acre by acre. Sun beating down. Arms aching. It would be useless. Exhausting. Impossible.
That farmer has no choice but to look up.
He has to trust God for the rain.
That’s the difference between the seasons where we feel capable and the seasons where we’re forced to depend. Between the little gardens we manage ourselves and the crop fields God uses to teach us surrender.
And incarceration? This place? This is a crop field.
Sarah’s Story: Lessons in Dependence When God Brings the Rain
I met Sarah not long after she came in from court. We bonded quickly maybe because pain recognizes pain.
She was angry. Hurt. Disoriented. She felt abandoned by the one person she thought was supposed to fight for her. Her attorney hadn’t visited. No calls. No updates. Just silence.
During rec time one day, she paced back and forth, hands clenching, voice rising.
“It’s like they planted me here and just forgot about me,” she said. “Like I’m a seed nobody cares enough to water.”
I felt that deep in my chest because I had said almost the same thing to God weeks earlier.
She kept talking. “How does someone put you in a place like this and then disappear?”
I listened quietly until something stirred inside me something I know now was the Holy Spirit.
“Sarah,” I said slowly, “maybe this is exactly where you’re supposed to be.”
She stopped pacing and stared at me like I had lost my mind.
I kept going, even though my voice shook a little. “Maybe this place isn’t about your attorney at all. Maybe this is where God wants you rooted so deeply that He’s the only one you can depend on. Maybe this is where He brings the rain.”
Her face softened. Tears welled up. She sat down hard beside me.
“What do you mean?” she whispered.
I told her what God had been teaching me.
Out there, we think we’re in control. We rely on people, plans, systems, money, and connections. We water our own little gardens and convince ourselves we’re okay. But in here? None of that works. This situation is too big. Too heavy. Too far out of our hands.
“This is the crop field,” I told her. “And only God can water it.”
My Breaking Point: How God Brings the Rain in Hard Seasons
That conversation took me back to my own breaking point.
Three months in.
Lying on a thin mattress. Staring at a cracked ceiling. Listening to the sounds of a place that never truly sleeps.
My kids were safe with family, but I was missing everything. Bedtime routines. School mornings. The small moments that don’t seem big until they’re gone.
My case felt frozen. My attorney was stretched thin. My family loved me, but life kept moving for them.
I felt buried.
Like a seed dropped into the dirt and forgotten.
That’s when God finally broke through my resistance.
I stopped trying to control outcomes. Stopped replaying conversations in my head. Stopped trying to force answers that weren’t mine to get.
And the rain came.
Not all at once.
Quietly.
A letter from my child that made me sob into my pillow. A scripture that felt like it was written just for me. A peace that didn’t make sense in a place like this. A breakthrough in my case that no one could explain.
God was watering places in me I didn’t even know were dry.
What Total Dependence Looks Like When God Brings the Rain
Total dependence doesn’t mean doing nothing.
The farmer still shows up.
So do I.
I pray before my feet touch the floor. I read the Word because I need it, not because it’s expected. I attend every program available. I face the trauma and choices that led me here. I mother my children from behind bars with letters, prayers, and love.
But I’ve released control of the results.
I can’t rush God’s timing. I can’t force people to show up. I can’t manipulate outcomes.
That’s where faith lives.
Learn more about trusting God in difficult seasons.
For Sarah, dependence meant letting go of panic and choosing trust. Two weeks later, things shifted in her case in ways no one saw coming.
God was working while she waited.
The Harvest Is Coming: Trusting God Brings the Rain
Crop fields produce bigger harvests than gardens ever could.
But they require rain.
They require surrender.
They require trust.
I don’t know what field you’re standing in today. Maybe it’s prison. Maybe it’s loss. Maybe it’s something you can’t fix no matter how hard you try.
Stop exhausting yourself with a bucket.
Plant the seeds. Do your part. Then look up.
God sees your field.
The rain is coming.
From My Heart to Yours: When God Brings the Rain
To my babies: Mama is growing in ways comfort never allowed.
To anyone reading this: You’re not buried. You’re planted.
And when God brings the rain, the harvest will be worth it.
Read More: You Are Not Your Past: 7 Powerful Lessons from a Mother’s Letter of Hope
