When I returned from Mt. Hermon our new orchard needed pruning. My brother Patrick does the big pruning in winter, but this was the small pruning of spring, the tedious job of cutting off all the new shoots the tree tries to grow when cold days yield to warm sunshine. Scott hurt his knee and couldn’t bend down to help. The older boys were working in another orchard. So it was me and the one-year-old trees, with Cruz hanging on my back like a monkey.

Trees are a lot like people. They want to grow their own way. A good farmer is a lot like God. He grows the tree to his liking. Cutting off all the limbs he doesn’t want to produce fruit. A good farmer only keeps the choice limbs he knows will bear the best fruit as the branches mature.

A well-pruned tree is really important. Peach trees should be shaped like a fluted wine glass. Apricots and pluots need a wider spread, more like a bowl. I don’t know how our walnut trees get pruned. My brother does all that. I don’t work with the nuts. I work with the fruit.

Not long ago someone in DC said, “Most of the fruit and nuts come from California.” He wasn’t just talking about agriculture, he was poking fun at those who run the state. People were offended. I thought it was funny. It made me laugh. I loved it.

And I love our fruit and nut trees.

In the photo below I’m working on a young pluot tree, a hybrid fruit that is 75 percent plum and 25 percent apricot. There are over twenty varieties of pluots. I’m not sure how many varieties we actually grow, but the dapple dandies are my favorite and the flavor supremes taste pretty amazing too.

I found it ironic that I went from trying to grow at Mount Hermon’s Writers’ Conference like a little tree grows, to lord of the orchard with sharp pruning shears in my hand. Can I just admit this? I love our trees. I talk to our trees. I stroke their trunks and smell their sweet blooms, and snap pictures as they grow just like I take pictures of our kids. My brother is the same way. Farming is in his blood and the trees mean a lot to him.

So it kind of hurt me to cut our little trees last week. To run my hands up and down their trucks, stripping off the new growth, using my shears on the bigger branches stubbornly refusing a gentler hand. One of our cherry trees had a big branch that needed to come off. It was too big for my shears so I broke it off, and then trimmed back the ragged edge.

When I broke that branch, an epiphany broke over me. I was like this branch. Like these trees. For years God has been pruning me, shaping me as a writer and a person, and I didn’t even know it.

Here’s a bit of history: I wrote my first novel at 21 years old, right after I left college for marriage. It was a historical romance I submitted to Harlequin Publishers. The editor wrote back, “You’re a really good writer, but your hero is too mean. Try again.” Something along these lines, anyway. What I really remember was my hero was too mean.

By the time I got this handwritten rejection letter, I was pregnant with Cami and so sick I couldn’t get off the couch. I did nothing more with that novel. I’m not even sure a copy of this book exists anymore. I wrote it on a type writer. In Germany, I began work on my second novel, another historical romance. I submitted the first three chapters to editors after we moved back to the states and our second child Lacy was born. An editor wrote back. “We like it. Send us the whole book.” I did and six months later got another letter, “You’re a good writer, and you have a unique story here, but we’re sorry to say we have to pass on this project. Keep writing!”

By now, I was 25 years old, the mother of two little girls, and discouraged as a novelist.

While in college, Scott and I had a friend who played football. On his junior college team, a coach said to this friend, “Birdwell, you got potential. But you know what potential means? It means you ain’t worth a poop now.” Of course the coach didn’t use the word “poop.” You can imagine what he said.

Birdwell struggled on his junior college team with that hard coach, and then went on to play at a larger university, doing very well on the field. We sat in the stands cheering him on, so proud of his perseverance, and his talent, and his big heart for football. One night when he’d been drinking and fell asleep on our couch, Birdwell tapped his chest and said with gusto, “First string, coach! First string!” Scott and I laughed, but I thought this precious. I understood the power of a dream.

And at 25, I felt like Birdwell before he found his groove. I had potential as a writer, but knew this meant I was writing poop now.

That coach’s voice was stuck in my head, so I kept writing, and a year or two later, I had a third book that placed runner up in a big writing contest. In the midst of this, I also went to work writing for a newspaper. And because of the contest, ended up with a great literary agent.

I’ll never forget the day I got that phone call from New York City. “You have what I can’t teach you. That something we’re looking for, and we want to represent you.” Then the agent went on to say, “I see a lot of potential in your writing, but you are young, and have so much to learn. Yet you are special and I can teach you what you need to know. We’ll make a great team. Let’s get to work!”

That literary agent and I spent months shaping my novel. Working with this agent was like a dream realized. She groomed best-selling writers and the agency had high hopes for me. And then this agent suddenly left the literary business and it broke my heart.

It never occurred to me this agent I adored had dreams of her own. God opened a door for her in Hollywood to work with Ron Howard’s movie company. That was it. She was done with New York City and I was a part of her New York City story. Crazy, since I was this little mom changing diapers out in California when I wasn’t writing for the newspaper or staying up late at night working on my novels by lamplight.

The New York agency quickly assigned me a new agent. And my book didn’t sell, but I got a movie contract out of the deal, and went to Hollywood to meet the producer who wanted to meet me. This producer took me to a coffee shop with sleepy movie stars wearing shades inside this sleek cafe and asked me if I’d be interested in relocating to Hollywood, living down there and writing for their company. I was flattered, but declined. Hollywood did not appeal to me. I didn’t want to write movie scripts. I wanted to write novels.

By now our third baby Luke was a busy toddler. And my marriage was breaking. I wrote two more fiction novels my literary agency wanted to try to sell, but my new agent and I were going round and round during the development of these novels. “You need more sex. More drama and death in your stories before we can do something with them,” said my new agent. I knew she was right, but I was exhausted and disheartened, and in the midst of all this, God kept whispering, you don’t need sex, drama, and death, you need Me.

Finally, at 33 years old, I surrendered to God and was born again.

After this, I called my New York literary agent and said I’d couldn’t write anymore. I’d met Jesus and he was changing my life. I was going to grow my babies and grow a garden.

“Good luck with that,” my agent said.

Several years after this, I tried my hand at Christian fiction. It was like playing horseshoes. Coming close to getting published, but never quite making that ringer of a book sale.

Last week, as I snipped off all the little branches on the our young orchard trees, I realized God has been doing this with my writing all these years. I kept trying to grow novel branches and fiction branches and God kept snipping them off. The only branches that seemed to have matured in my writing are the real-life kind. The few nonfiction magazine articles and true life short stories I wrote through the years sold. My newspaper editors appreciated my work. People have responded well to my nonfiction blog. But my fiction has been cut off again and again and again.

What has grown in my life is the writing of truth.

And it’s true. The truth hurts. I wrote Farming Grace in blood, sweat, and tears. It doesn’t seem that way now a few months after finishing the first draft, but that book was a war for me. My mem war.

I know this blog post is long. Sorry friends. This is what I learned in my Mt. Hermon blogging class: my blogs are too long. Thanks for hanging in there with me as I’ve learned to blog. There are some of you, honestly –I’m not sure how many people really read my blog– but I know you who email me, message me, encourage me week after week to keep writing and I think of you guys when I sit down to post something. I pray for you when you don’t know I’m praying for you.

I hope you read my posts and God speaks to you about your own spiritual journey. About your own cut off branches. You are a little tree to God. Jesus is pruning you to bear fruit for Him. Farmers pick the branches they know will produce the best fruit. And every year our trees are pruned. Sometimes the pruning is brutal. We burn the branches in a pile the size of a house.

“Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. John 15:2.

Remember, God knows what he’s doing. He is only cutting you to care for you.

We don’t cut our trees to hurt them. We cut our trees to strengthen them. To help them grow big and strong and beautiful. So our trees produce fruit that feeds a hungry world.