Leaving the comfort of an old, charming house on Main Street surrounded by friends and neighbors, Jean Coleman and her husband moved to the solitude of a farm where she created a market garden business. Her plan was to grow flowers to sell, but God’s plan was to grow her for His market.
While wearing overalls and working in the dirt, she sensed His presence and saw practical parables springing from the ordinary stuff of her life. From learning to drive a tractor to pulling weeds, she got heavenly glimpses of the gospel message, and the essence of life came into clear focus. In arranging and selling her flowers, she saw how her Father arranges and positions her, and she realized that she was grown and picked by God for His purposes just as the flowers in the garden were grown in order to be cut and sold at her discretion. She felt His fatherly love as she parented her beloved flowers, and the business of gardening taught her about the business of heaven.
It was the birth of her first grandchild that prompted her to write her story and pass along the insights she had received. Later, a horseback riding accident forced her to retire from market gardening, but also afforded her the time to write. In transcribing her garden journey, she revisited unresolved memories and recognized the hand of God in her life. It quickly came into focus that both the relocation to the country and the flower business were divine appointments. That time of reflection brought her to a place of rest in the garden of her soul. It was there she found yearned-for peace and abundant blessing.
Jean Coleman lives in Washington, North Carolina with her husband of forty years, has three married children, and, at present, five happy grandchildren. Adding critters of the wild to her list of companions, she relishes sharing her country sanctuary with them.
Book Recap:
From choosing a field in order to create a market garden, to selling the harvested flowers, I Met Him in My Overalls by Jean Coleman provides metaphors of the Gospel illustrating how God uses even mundane tasks as parables for life:
Every hardship in life is, to God, like the pruning, cutting, and training of a plant are to the gardener
Weeds demonstrate ways in which our adversary robs us of joy and abundant life
The negative effect of insects and wild life on the garden clarify the reality and tactics of the unseen enemy, which we often don’t realize until destruction has begun
Dumping useless items on a compost pile to be decomposed and “reborn” as fertilizer parallels our confession of sin and God’s redemptive forgiveness
There is a price to be paid if a desirable product is produced
As gardeners we can see from the Master’s vantage point, and from the flower’s perspective we realize our dependence on God. The revelations are life changing. Every step in her garden journey brought the author closer to God and she shares, with transparency, how she found the lover of her soul and a place of rest for her searching heart.
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