The Tomato Plants the Deer Stripped the Night Before the Party
The Tomato Plants the Deer Stripped the Night Before the Party
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, September 26, 2026
I walked out to the garden at six in the morning with a colander in my hand, planning to pick everything ripe enough for my daughter's graduation party that afternoon. Four tomato plants, a row of green beans, corn I had babied since April, watering it by hand most evenings because the hose did not reach that far. I planted it in the spring for exactly this day, wanting to set something on the table that I had grown myself, proof to myself as much as anyone that I had built something steady this year. What I found instead was a garden stripped to stalks, every tomato gone, the bean leaves shredded, deer tracks pressed into the dirt where I had knelt so many evenings. They came sometime after midnight and took, in a few hours, what I had spent five months growing.
I stood there longer than I want to admit, colander empty at my side, feeling something collapse that had nothing to do with vegetables. I have lived through disappointments that mattered far more than a garden, a marriage that did not survive my worst years, people who stopped calling once I got sober because I was no longer useful to them. I thought I had grown calluses against disappointment by now. Standing there, I realized how thin those calluses actually were, because this small, hopeful thing I had tended in secret for my daughter had been taken from me in a single night, and it felt as unfair as every larger loss I have carried.
Solomon named the ache of that kind of morning long before deer tracks existed. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). I had carried one small hope all spring, that I would hand my daughter a plate of tomatoes I grew myself and watch her notice. That hope got eaten in the dark by animals who had no idea what they were interrupting, and my heart was sick in a way that surprised me with how small the cause was and how large the ache turned out to be.
Paul writes about tribulation in a way I had read many times and never fully believed until that morning tested it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). I have always stumbled on that word disappoint sitting in the same sentence as tribulation, as if Paul already knew a man standing over a stripped garden would need to hear that this loss could not touch the hope underneath it.
Habakkuk stood in a ruin far worse than mine, an entire nation's food supply gone, and wrote words I never fully understood until that morning. "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet" (Habakkuk 3:18-19, NKJV). I actually laughed once, standing there, at deer's feet showing up in that verse the same morning deer had ruined my garden, a small, strange mercy that felt like God nudging me toward Him in the detail.
Here is where my own reasoning ran out. I could explain the deer, the fence I never built, the risk of planting anything unprotected, and none of it touched the grief in my chest. Explaining a loss is not the same thing as healing from it. What steadied me was remembering that the fruit I actually needed for that party was never going to come from a vine in my backyard. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Deer cannot strip that fruit in the night. It does not grow from soil I have to guard myself. Jesus told His disciples exactly where fruit like that comes from. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5, NKJV). Abiding was never a technique for a better tomato crop. It was the only place fruit was ever actually going to hold.
I drove to the store that morning and bought vegetables I did not grow, and nobody at the party noticed or cared where they came from, only I did. But something else got served that afternoon I had not planned for, a steadiness that had nothing to do with the garden, the kind Lamentations describes better than I could. "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23, NKJV). New every morning, even the morning I found the garden stripped bare.
The plot is still stalks and stems tonight, and I have not decided whether I will replant before the season ends. But I stood out there again this evening, and for the first time all day the disappointment did not feel like the whole story anymore. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what got taken from you before you had the chance to bring it to the table. He has a plan for you that was never dependent on what the deer left standing, and He will never leave you alone in the dirt to grieve it by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Romans 5:3-5; Habakkuk 3:18-19; Galatians 5:22-23; John 15:4-5; Lamentations 3:22-23.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, September 26, 2026
I walked out to the garden at six in the morning with a colander in my hand, planning to pick everything ripe enough for my daughter's graduation party that afternoon. Four tomato plants, a row of green beans, corn I had babied since April, watering it by hand most evenings because the hose did not reach that far. I planted it in the spring for exactly this day, wanting to set something on the table that I had grown myself, proof to myself as much as anyone that I had built something steady this year. What I found instead was a garden stripped to stalks, every tomato gone, the bean leaves shredded, deer tracks pressed into the dirt where I had knelt so many evenings. They came sometime after midnight and took, in a few hours, what I had spent five months growing.
I stood there longer than I want to admit, colander empty at my side, feeling something collapse that had nothing to do with vegetables. I have lived through disappointments that mattered far more than a garden, a marriage that did not survive my worst years, people who stopped calling once I got sober because I was no longer useful to them. I thought I had grown calluses against disappointment by now. Standing there, I realized how thin those calluses actually were, because this small, hopeful thing I had tended in secret for my daughter had been taken from me in a single night, and it felt as unfair as every larger loss I have carried.
Solomon named the ache of that kind of morning long before deer tracks existed. "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, But when the desire comes, it is a tree of life" (Proverbs 13:12, NKJV). I had carried one small hope all spring, that I would hand my daughter a plate of tomatoes I grew myself and watch her notice. That hope got eaten in the dark by animals who had no idea what they were interrupting, and my heart was sick in a way that surprised me with how small the cause was and how large the ache turned out to be.
Paul writes about tribulation in a way I had read many times and never fully believed until that morning tested it. "And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us" (Romans 5:3-5, NKJV). I have always stumbled on that word disappoint sitting in the same sentence as tribulation, as if Paul already knew a man standing over a stripped garden would need to hear that this loss could not touch the hope underneath it.
Habakkuk stood in a ruin far worse than mine, an entire nation's food supply gone, and wrote words I never fully understood until that morning. "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer's feet" (Habakkuk 3:18-19, NKJV). I actually laughed once, standing there, at deer's feet showing up in that verse the same morning deer had ruined my garden, a small, strange mercy that felt like God nudging me toward Him in the detail.
Here is where my own reasoning ran out. I could explain the deer, the fence I never built, the risk of planting anything unprotected, and none of it touched the grief in my chest. Explaining a loss is not the same thing as healing from it. What steadied me was remembering that the fruit I actually needed for that party was never going to come from a vine in my backyard. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law" (Galatians 5:22-23, NKJV). Deer cannot strip that fruit in the night. It does not grow from soil I have to guard myself. Jesus told His disciples exactly where fruit like that comes from. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing" (John 15:4-5, NKJV). Abiding was never a technique for a better tomato crop. It was the only place fruit was ever actually going to hold.
I drove to the store that morning and bought vegetables I did not grow, and nobody at the party noticed or cared where they came from, only I did. But something else got served that afternoon I had not planned for, a steadiness that had nothing to do with the garden, the kind Lamentations describes better than I could. "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23, NKJV). New every morning, even the morning I found the garden stripped bare.
The plot is still stalks and stems tonight, and I have not decided whether I will replant before the season ends. But I stood out there again this evening, and for the first time all day the disappointment did not feel like the whole story anymore. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly what got taken from you before you had the chance to bring it to the table. He has a plan for you that was never dependent on what the deer left standing, and He will never leave you alone in the dirt to grieve it by yourself.
Scriptures used (NKJV): Proverbs 13:12; Romans 5:3-5; Habakkuk 3:18-19; Galatians 5:22-23; John 15:4-5; Lamentations 3:22-23.
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