This past week I knelt in our garden beds, gloves on my hands, clearing them to let the soil rest through the winter. This summer brought a panoply of growth. Cucumbers that grew quickly, and much larger than we could manage, were now rotting into the ground. Tomatoes that ripened had softened into the dirt, their skins splitting open. Weeds had wound themselves around the stems in a crisscross of vegetation that hid the earth from view. I worked deliberately, filling compost bag after compost bag, because with every handful, I asked myself: is this still alive?

In our bed of tomatoes, a group of marigolds held my gaze for a bit longer. We planted them as seeds at the end of August, so late in the season that we never expected to see them flower. Now, in November, with frost on the horizon, here they are, blooming bright orange in the middle of all those weeds.

I chose to leave them. Clearing a garden for winter teaches me to discern: to remove what has died so it stops the cycle of rot, and to protect whatever is still reaching for the light, even if it arrives later than planned.

In reading this week’s parsha, I imagine Yitzchak with his hands in the earth, asking himself a similar question to mine.

After Avraham dies, the Philistines stop up every well his father’s servants had dug, filling them with dirt (Bereshit 26:15). They are envious when Yitzchak is able to plant in a year of famine and reap a hundredfold. Sforno notes that Avimelech had forbidden anyone from harming Yitzchak himself, so the Philistines poured their jealousy into the wells. The water stays hidden under a layer of earth that makes the ground look dry and useless to anyone passing by.

Avimelech then tells him to leave. He says, go away from us, for you have grown too mighty for us (26:16). Yitzchak goes, and pitches his tent in the nachal, the valley of Gerar, and settles there (26:17).

The Torah tells us that Yitzchak returned and dug out the wells again (26:18). As he works, he does something surprisingly tender: he calls them each by the name his father had given it. He takes the time to stop, to notice and name the well he is reviving, offering it a new pathway.

Healing so often looks like this: life piling dirt over the places in us that once gave us water, either through loss or a season of struggle. When we look at ourselves in this state, we see dry ground. The work of teshuvah asks us to pull our gloves on, dig, and call what we uncover by its original name. In my garden, that same soil I thought had been spent was holding and nourishing the marigold seeds the whole time.

Yitzchak’s servants dig beside him in the valley, and as they break new ground, they strike a be’er mayim chaim, a well of living water (26:19). They find it in the nachal, the low place where Yitzchak landed after Avimelech sent him away. Sometimes that new wellspring rises in the ground we never chose to stand on in the first place. In healing, sometimes the clearest water comes from the lowest places.

The local shepherds claim this new water, insisting it is theirs. Yitzchak then names that well Esek, contention. His servants dig a second, and the quarrel continues, and he names it Sitnah, hostility (26:20-21). Yitzchak names these wells honestly, noticing the struggle around them, and the Torah allows us to witness it. Healing asks the same honesty of us, and calling a struggle by its name is often the first moment its grip loosens.

In the next verse, Yitzchak stops fighting for ground that keeps hurting him. He moves on from there, walks a little farther, and digs again, and this time no one quarrels with him. He names the well Rechovot, for now God has made room for us, and we will flourish in the land (26:22).

Some of what we clear from our own lives belongs in the compost bag. A relationship that remains contentious, or a battle we keep having with ourselves can go in with the rotting cucumbers. We can move on from there, and trust that another well waits a little farther down the valley, with fertile soil.

Ramban hears a prophecy in these wells. The living water alludes to the house of God, Whom Yirmiyahu calls mekor mayim chayim, the source of living water (17:13). Esek and Sitnah recall the first two Batei Mikdash, each met with conflict until its destruction. Rechovot points to the third Beit HaMikdash, which God will build without quarrel. Our healing carries that promise too. The wells that held our struggle remain part of the story, and they lead us toward a place with room to breathe. It is a promise still unfolding. The same kind of promise found in surprising growth in the garden in November.

When Yitzchak arrives in Be’er Sheva, God appears to him that very night and tells him not to be afraid, for [God] is with him (26:24). The promise comes in the dark, in the same way promises of healing can come to us during the work we do in our darkest hours. Yitzchak pitches his tent there, and his servants begin to dig once more, finding water once again (26:32).

When I finished clearing the garden, I left the marigolds standing in the bed of tomatoes, bright orange against the bare soil. They remind me that growth doesn’t always follow the timeline that we plan for. Whatever has buried your wells this season, the water is still there, waiting beneath the dirt. Healing asks us to pull our gloves on again and trust that the ground will open.

May we each be blessed to keep digging, and to one day look up from the earth and say, we found water.