I Am Frightened Of Watering It Wrong

You have barely touched it.

It came to you in the spring, and since then you have moved it once and watered it maybe four times, and every one of those four took about ten minutes of standing in front of it first.

Is it dry. Is that dry or is that just the top. If I water it now and it did not need it, have I done something. If I do not and it did, have I done something.

And most days the answer is to leave it, because leaving it feels like the safe option.

It is not the safe option. It is just the option where nothing happens and therefore nothing can be blamed on you.

So let me say what I think this actually is, because it is not carefulness.

You have been handling a plant the way a person handles something they are on trial for.

Not the spirit of bondage again to fear

Paul writes to Rome about two different arrangements a person can be living under, and he names them precisely.

For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. (Romans 8:15, King James Version)

Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear.

You are not living under the arrangement that verse rules out, and no pot on any windowsill has ever once had the standing to put you back under it. Romans 8:15 says ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman standing in front of a plant for ten minutes.

Notice what bondage looks like in practice, because it is not chains.

It is the sense that every action is being assessed, that a wrong move has consequences, and that the safest thing is to make no move at all. That is the atmosphere the verse is describing, and it is exactly the atmosphere in your kitchen.

And what replaces it is not confidence. It is not being told you will get it right. It is a relationship, named in the most familiar words available: Abba, Father.

You were moved into a household rather than into an examination, and nothing about that arrangement has ever once depended on you handling things correctly. The Spirit of God is what makes that the actual air you breathe, and Romans 8 is where the two arrangements are set side by side.

What is actually at stake

Now the practical half, and it is very short, because the facts here are small.

Watering a plant slightly too much on one occasion does nothing. Watering it slightly too little on one occasion does nothing.

Plants die of patterns, over weeks. They do not die of single decisions, and there is almost no single act with a watering can that a person can perform that would finish a healthy plant.

So the ten minutes of deliberation is being spent on a decision that genuinely does not carry the weight you are giving it.

You have been deliberating over something that has almost no consequence, and no single pour has ever once been the moment a plant was lost. What is written in Romans 8:15 rules out the atmosphere of assessment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman the true size of a thing.

And here is the actual risk, which nobody mentions.

The real danger to that plant is the pattern of not watering it, which is exactly what the fear has been producing. Four times since the spring is not carefulness. It is a plant going without, because the person who loves it cannot bear to act.

The fear of harming it has been the thing harming it, which is the cruelest shape this takes and the one worth naming out loud.

You are able to act on its behalf without being sure, and one pour made without checking has never once been more dangerous than four months of standing still. The Spirit of God is the one who says that without a word of blame in it, and Romans 8 is the ground under the freedom.

Pour, stop, walk away

So here is the instruction and it has three parts and they are all about speed.

Pour. Stop. Walk away.

Do not check the soil first. Do not lift it to feel the weight. Do not look at the leaves and make an assessment. Go to it, pour water in until you see it start to come through the bottom, stop, and leave the room.

The not checking is the point. Checking is where the ten minutes live, and the ten minutes are the bondage, and you cannot dismantle them by checking more carefully.

If it turns out it did not need it, nothing happens. If it turns out it needed it badly, you have helped. There is no third outcome in which something goes wrong today.

You are permitted to do it fast and without deliberation, and pouring without checking has never once been carelessness with something you love. Romans 8:15 says ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, and the Holy Spirit is the one who walks a woman out of a room she has been standing in for months.