My husband has been growing a bucket garden. For those of you who don’t know what I’m referring to, he has multiple smaller containers the size of large planters and has planted a variety of vegetable seeds in these buckets. He has babied these things for months now—watering them daily, checking for worms and bugs, and pulling weeds.

            Then he and our oldest son left for eighteen days on a mission trip. He walked me and my youngest son through the steps of tending these plants and left them in our hands. Daily, I checked on these buckets looking for worms and stink bugs on the leaves. I also watered them often. But no matter how attentive I was to those plants, they still looked pitiful the very next day.

            Some days I set the nozzle on spray and watered both the soil and the leaves. Other days I set it to jet mode and saturated the roots. I’d get up the next morning and the plants would be perky, but by the evening, they looked sad and droopy.

            Four squash, two tomatoes, and one pepper were ready for picking while hubby was away. I kept watching the growing garden, sure it should be producing more based on the number of blooms.

            Now my husband is home, and the plants look great again. I’m not sure what is different about the way we tend the plants—thumb color, I suppose. But I didn’t kill them and that was my goal. They didn’t thrive, but I definitely kept them on life support.

            Sometimes life throws so many things our way, we can barely keep our heads above the water. Dodge one thing and get splatted with another. Duck one projectile, get knocked down by the next. Trip on a hazard, and face plant because of a new one. No matter how many times we try to keep moving forward, we seem to be fighting a losing battle.

            Kind of like my plants on life support. I tried. Honestly, I did. But no matter what, I could not make those plants thrive. And in life, it’s the same thing. Some seasons are going to feel more like being on life support instead of thriving.

But here’s the thing to remember: Life support is still alive. It may not look like what we anticipated or be completely ideal, but it’s still another day on this side of the dirt which means God’s not done with us yet.

Those eighteen days on life support have turned into a week of thriving again. Just because things get tough, and we start to look droopy doesn’t mean we’re done. The best is yet to come, my friend. The best is yet to come.