The Importance Of Life In Jon Gordon's The Garden

Are You Controlling Your Life or Is the Enemy?

“Mental health problems don’t define who you are. They are something you experience. You walk in the rain and you feel the rain, but you are not the rain.” This quote by Matt Haig summarizes the book, The Garden by Jon Gordon. The book starts with a friendly neighbor, Mr. Erwin, who overhears two siblings, Jay and Kay, sharing how they are mentally struggling and are very anxious and worried about their life and future. The siblings are being bullied in school, which harms their life and mental health. Mr. Erwin makes it his mission to help the two and show them there is more to life than what people think with the help of the bible. Throughout the book, The Garden, many life lessons were shared

Erwin takes the two to his garden which is supposed to represent the one in the bible. He then shows them the two trees; the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Mr. Erwin used these trees to share a story in the bible where a serpent convinced Adam and Eve to eat from the tree they were explicitly told not to eat fruit from. The serpent said to them that they were not like God and they needed to eat the fruit to be like God. This story showed the siblings that serpents, or bullies, will place these negative thoughts in your head. They want you to believe that you are not who or what you think you are. The book then moves into the 5 D’s and why they are

One of the lessons that really stuck out to me was how we tend to let others' opinions plant a seed of doubt in our minds. These thoughts do not come from us, rather they come from the enemy in life. “Just because you have a negative thought doesn’t mean you have to believe it” (Page 48). We all think negatively about ourselves, but we don’t have to believe it. If you give in to negative thoughts, it will be harder to believe in the positive ones that are true. Another big lesson in this book is that you need to focus more on building relationships with people rather than worrying about materialistic things. We all want a good life, but sometimes we focus more on what kind of car we will drive or how much money we will make and we need to shift our focus on what kind of person we want to be. People will remember you for how you made them feel and what you did, not what you had. The biggest lesson though for me was that we need to let others help us. Jay and Kay would never have changed the way they thought about life if they hadn’t let Mr. Erwin help them. We can learn a lot from other people and we have to let them teach us. So many people do not want help from others, but you really can’t do anything alone. These lessons helped me look at my own life and how I live, and I want to use these lessons to set goals for myself and my