My little pots of rosemary, dill, lavender, aloe, and thyme bring me great joy.
I’ve never been much of an herb person, but last year, my brother taught me how to use thyme while seasoning steaks, and I’ve never looked back.
While the swirling North Dakota winter turns everything white, gray, brown, and dull outside my window, I nourish and water the vibrant, green, aromatic herb garden inside my heated garage. It’s like hoarding a treasure trove of summer though all the rest of the season has passed away.
And my family benefits. Savory stews, flavorful meat, roasted potatoes, and dilled pickles and cabbages spice up our supper times, filling the house with the homey scent of comfort and care.
Herbs aren’t all that’s growing around here when I glance around the supper table. I can almost watch as each meal nourishes the minds and bodies of my growing children. Every so often, I ask my teenage son to stand near the door jamb where we measure heights. I’m not sure whether inches or months are passing faster.
Author Sally Clarkson has written, “Home is the kingdom in which we have the daily choice and power to make our tiny domain one of light in darkness.”
I’ve been cooking for my family for twenty years, but only in the last year have I discovered the joy of adding homegrown herbs. Maybe thyme isn’t adding light all by itself, but attention to detail and going to extra effort to provide the good, the true, and the beautiful cultivates not only a delicious meal but also the palate and tastes of my family. It is one small way I can show Christ’s love to them.
My children will carry their tastes into adulthood. Isn’t that what every article you ever read about picky eaters says? When my children were trying solid foods for the first time, many helpful advice-givers encouraged me to try varied tastes, textures, and types of foods so that the kids would grow into healthy adults.
It makes me want to cultivate this type of flavor in their education and entertainment choices. I don’t only want to put my time and effort into growing herbs in the garage to flavor their food. I also want to shape the moral palates of each of my children so that they will love virtue and live as lights in darkness.
After a family movie night, I realized that one of my sons repeatedly chose to pretend to be the villain. He was alternately an orc, Darth Vader, and the Green-Eyed Man. I discussed this with my husband, and we agreed that our son was getting access to movies with more intense villains because he had older siblings. His screen time was outweighing his literary input. He really seemed to love evil.
We decided to do more read-alouds with heroic good guys and have more intentional conversations with him about good and evil. I watched to see if he would still root for the villain when the story came from the pages of a book. He did not. Instead, he cheered out loud when Peter killed the wolf and clapped his hands when (*spoiler alert*) Aslan rose from the dead.
In The Hobbit, Tolkien describes the house of Elrond as,
“The last homely house east of the sea. That house was…a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.”
If we cultivate the flavor of virtue and love in all the arenas of homelife, our children will develop a taste for it. They will carry the light and love of Christ they learned at home into the dark world. They will spice up our bland culture, bringing the warmth and brightness of the Spring of resurrection to the long, dull winter that began the moment sin entered the world.
No home, perhaps not even Elrond’s, is actually perfect, but as I cut a piece of aloe to soothe a small, burned finger, I think of the Lord’s words: “If anyone loves me, He will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”
If I can cultivate that in my home, the harvest will be sweet indeed.
At night, she writes articles, Bible study curriculum for children, and books, including her latest novel The Winning of Lady Wisdom. You can follow her adventures at SarahDixonYoung.com
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