In case you haven’t heard The Garden has been planted. The Garden is a Holston Home for Children transitional home for graduates of the Recovering Hearts program for women. Cathy and I are the appointed stewards. Ideally, the women at The Garden will be partners in that stewardship.
The Backstory
History is important if for no other reason than it reveals our roots and God’s hand in forming them.
Cathy and I were married in February 2005. The timing was largely driven by a mutual call to serve what some describe as “The least of these”. That is inmates, addicts, and their children.
Our marriage began in a faith-based, coed transitional home that we named Live Again the Walk Inc. The idea was that we are born again. We then have to learn to live again. We crawl before we walk. The essential paradigm remains the same for The Garden. I covered a lot of our transitional housing resume in How For Go and For The Love of Pua.
Suffice it to say that after twelve years of living with five to ten inmates and sometimes their children, we had a pretty clear revelation of Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 3.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.
1 Corinthians 3:6-9
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.
He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building.
The Garden
We left Hawaii for the Harvest School of Missions in Pemba, Mozambique, in 2016, then became full-time missionaries in Honduras. Nearly six years later, we landed in Greeneville, Tennessee. I began working with dependent, neglected, sometimes delinquent youth at Holston Home, where I currently serve as a Shift Supervisor. One day out of the blue, Cathy said, “I don’t know why. But I see us living on a farm that someone is going to ask us to care take.” I have learned through the years to pay attention when my wife says things like that. Still, we never breathed a word about it to anyone. A month later we met Mary Bernal.
Mary is a criminal defense lawyer in California. She is full of love and joy and hope and perseverance and…did I say hope? She’s also a bit prophetic. She had purchased the farm, site unseen because God told her to. Anyone who knows me knows I am, shall we say, Biblically skeptical 1 Thess 5:20-21 when it comes to prophecy. “I see you and Brian living here,” Mary said.
“Yeeahh… I don’t see that.”, I told Cathy.
Mary did her best to bring about her vision to help broken women. Still, God’s timing is key. So is Proverbs 3:5-8. Patience is a fruit and God uses our circumstances to develop it.
Fast forward…
Two years later, Holston President Bradley Williams asked to speak with me in his office. He and Able Carrico, the Pastor of the Rock Church also located on the Holston property, had been ceded control of the farm by Mary to be used as they saw fit. Neither of these men would ever do anything as THEY see fit and so they prayed. Both heard from the Lord that Cathy and I should be the ones to run whatever the farm would become.
“I’ve heard this before.” I said.
Bradley didn’t know what the farm should be used for at that point and asked me to pray.
I did.
Long story short, the Lord gave me a burden for another transition home for the Recovering Hearts women. Cathy had been patiently waiting for me to catch the vision. She jumped for joy when I finally did. I made this video to help Mary raise funds for some needed construction on what at that time was called The Glory Farm. Anyone confused about the definition of transitional housing should take the time to watch it.
For whatever reason, God did not provide the donors she’d hoped for. So, Mary being Mary, didn’t give up. She spent the bulk of her personal savings so the vision could come to fruition. That said, I had told the featured Recovering Hearts women, that the video was for “an Easter surprise.” Turns out I wasn’t far off. The construction was completed. The official opening date was April 10th, 2025.
So why was it named The Garden? Ironically we were visiting family on our old home turf, The Garden Island, otherwise known as Kauai Hawaii, when Bradley texted us and told us he thought the Lord was telling him we should name the upcoming Greeneville Tennessee transition home The Garden.
“Sounds prophetic,” I said.
Turns out it was.
As I said in the video, a transition home is “real life with training wheels”. I explain the paradigm in the context of parenting. The first stage is discipline, followed by coaching and friendship. Recovering Hearts is the discipline phase. The Garden is a place for coaching and friendship. The expectation is that residents are willing and able to receive and heed wise counsel and then discipline themselves. It sounds simple enough. The truth is that many, if not most, could have been dependent – neglected children living at the Holston Home for Children. Trauma lenses don’t change overnight. There are gaps in education and experience with life skills. Institutionalization and unconscious entitlement must be identified and patiently addressed as women learn to apply what God showed them in Recovering Hearts.
The first shall be last…
Another lesson the Lord has taught us through the years of which I often speak is that
God does not need me to do anything. He puts me in a position to serve because it is the best place for me to learn what He has to teach and conform me. Don’t ask why is this happening Lord? Ask what are you doing in me Lord?
That said, anyone who has received counsel from us has heard my speech about knowing one’s limits and setting healthy boundaries. I’ve talked about the importance of stillness and rest ad infinitum. It dawns on me as I write that I am a complete hypocrite. Then again, sometimes we teach what we need to learn. The truth is I only rest when rest is imposed upon me. I’ve been working nonstop, full throttle for at least two months without a break. Ironically we had just discussed our experience with waiting periods imposed by God in the small group that Cathy and I attend. Several people expressed their frustration with waiting.
“Man, I would love to have another waiting period!!” I said.
The very next day I was cutting logs for the base layer of the planters featured in the featured photo. I’d just completed a 60-hour work week at Holston. It was hot and I was tired from mowing and cutting and hauling logs when I decided to cut a dead tree on a slope in the field. I’ve been using chainsaws since I was ten and I always make an escape plan should something go wrong. This time I didn’t. The tree rolled, I jumped, and caught the still-turning blade on my knee. A favorite quote echoed through my mind as wondered if I would bleed out limping up the hill.
Stupid is as stupid does!
-Forest Gump-
The surgeon told me I’d cut through the joint capsule, a tendon that stabilizes the patella tendon and trimmed the meniscus.
The last shall be first.
Now, here I sit, waiting and being served by the very women I came to serve. Cindy shoveled the chicken coup yesterday after church. It was the next job on my punch list.
Currently, we have thirty-two hens and three roosters.
Apparently, chainsaw injuries are also effective catalysts for food and fellowship.
Spontaneous outbreaks of worship may also result.
So often I hear those in prison and addiction recovery ministries refer to those they serve as “The least of these” in reference to the words of Jesus in Mathew 25. In our experience, what others call “the least” frequently turns out to be the greatest among us. The one thing everyone featured in the photos above has in common is that, at one point, every one of us was broken. We can not think of anyone with whom we would rather partner as we learn to steward God’s gift which is The Garden.
One thing is certain. Life on earth is full of transitions. Life in the flesh is a circle. We are born dependent. We move through stages of fleshly independence and interdependence accompanied by illusions of personal significance. We end in a state of utter dependence on others. All residual pride is slain. I believe that one of God’s purposes in all of this is that we learn to be
Independently dependent on Him.
That seems to be His primary goal and purpose for The Garden.
And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10
Once again God has placed me in a position where I must receive from those I came to serve. It’s been a recurring motif in my life. Today, I am reticent to admit that my flesh is nearly sixty. But my mind says I’m 35 or 40. The truth is I might not have slowed down enough to cultivate joint stewardship had the Lord not put me down. In addition, I can’t get Hebrews 4 out of my mind.
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.
Hebrews 4:1
Like a lot of ministries at Holston, The Garden is a proverbial plane being built in flight. God will use it according to His will and in ways we could never expect or predict. All I know for sure is that Cathy and I love these ladies. I love them with the Father’s heart. I have learned more about the Father’s heart in working at Holston than at any other time or place in my life. For now, I will wait with eager expectation that the Lord has something special for all of us who reside at The Garden. If there is anything I have learned in my walk with the Lord thus far, it is that the true life that is hidden in Christ, the actively transforming life, is not about growing upward in fulfillment of our most recent “five-year plan”. It is found in a life that aims to go lower and slower. True life in Christ means growing down. We are so very grateful for the opportunity to grow down in East Tennessee.
Maranatha
