In 2021, I instigated the planting of a “Tiny Forest” in a scrubby patch of land in the middle of the estate where I live. Hundreds of British native trees and shrubs were planted into 200m² of wasteland.

For months, I volunteered — weeding, managing grass-cutting regimes, participating in citizen science, and doing a whole lot of litter-picking. Towards the end of the pandemic, a year later, I got a job and had to stop volunteering. I felt guilty about it. As the months went on, and I didn’t return, the guilt grew into shame. When I walked past, my head was full of “shoulds.”
“You should have brought the litter pickers.”
“You should have replied to those emails.”
“You should… you should…”
Until one day, I didn’t go back.

I avoided the whole area, unable to bear the weight of my failure.

The other week, I walked down that way for the first time in two years. I sat on one of the un-vandalized benches in the little clearing, a lone drinks can discarded amongst the grass where once there had been wood chippings.

But the trees! Oh, the trees were beautiful. They had grown tall and upright, with shrubs weaving amongst them and covering the ground. Through the undergrowth, small paths had been forced — whether by researchers, teens, or badgers, who knew? But the forest was growing and providing all it had promised: branches for birds to nest in and berries for food, roots reaching into the ground to take up the water runoff from the estate, shade in the city heat.

And I cried. I cried for joy, for relief, for gratitude. In my absence, God had taken those poor, weedy saplings and grown them into trees taller than I. Sitting amongst them, I knew God’s character — His goodness, His creative spirit, His generosity, and abundance, His mercy.

So often, both at Kintsugi Hope and in NHS Talking Therapies, even at home or in church, I feel like all I am doing is planting tiny twigs, instigating an idea. And I don’t have the time, nor the opportunity, nor the energy, to do all I wish I could do, and certainly not all that needs to be done. Sometimes I have to lay things down, and sometimes I know I give up too soon. I often think, “I should be doing more,” “I didn’t do it well enough,” “I could have done it better,” “I failed.”

But the forest tells me that God is good. He is faithful and generous, creative and merciful. He invites us into His work, and He pours out His gracious love on it. He says, “I love your offering. You did the little you could, at the time you could do it. But look what I have done. Look how I have blessed it. You gave me mere twigs, and I have grown you a forest.”

Written by Clarie Miles (Kintsugi Hope)

By Kintsugi Hope on October 10, 2024.

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Exported from Medium on October 30, 2024.

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